Eye Candy #601 - "The Expendables 2"

The Expendables 2:  Now with Even More Senior Citizens!  This sequel is a step backward from the 2010 action fan orgy, with most of the returning gang back in action: Sly, Statham, Lundgren, Crews, and Couture all back to make large red holes in people (Jet Li reprises his role for the opening sequence and then vanishes from the picture; Liam Hemingsworh is here as the team’s sniper).  This time around, the gang is hired by Church (Bruce Willis) to recover a hard drive from a downed aircraft in Albania, with a new Asian team member, CIA agent Maggie Chan (Yu Nan).  Once on the ground, they run afoul of the villainous Jean Vilain (played by Jean-Claude Van Damme) and his small army of squibbed-out soldiers who are also seeking the hard drive as it contains the map to a cache of Soviet-era plutonium.  Our boys then set about getting themselves some revenge (all while helping the locally oppressed population, a plot device now seen in both Expendables films).  In addition to the beefed-up presence of Willis, we also get more Schwarzenegger as Trench (and his face just looks WEIRD; I got distracted trying to determine who in the cast had face-lifts) and the addition of Chuck Norris as the damn near omnipotent Booker.  Aside from the whiz-bang opening sequence, this film is dull dull dull.  There are so many asides to other action films and knowing winks going on here, it’s a wonder the faces of the cast don’t freeze that way.   And the suspension of disbelief just gets worn the hell out somewhere around the part where Chuck Norris kills over a dozen men…and a tank…single-handedly…in 15 seconds.  Stallone looks like hell and mumbles through most of his “profound” dialogue (Lundgren continues his struggles being coherent in the English language). Van Damme is fun as the villain, even if most of his dialogue is crap.  Charisma Carpenter reprises her role for about 90 seconds.  After the first 10 minutes, this film was all kinds of disappointing.  Woodchuck sez, “Skip it.”