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80This over-the-top sequel caters to the lowest common denominator in the best possible way, and it's so fully committed to brainless bombast that it muscles audiences to applaud by sheer force of will.
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Aug 14, 201280The Expendables 2 offers the sendoff adrenaline junkies are seeking before the more sedate pace of fall releases.
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75What a fun-dumb relief! In the isolationist Expendables world, all foreigners are bad news. All buddy bonding is done with a wink. All pretenses of art are checked at the door. Someone even says, ''I'll be back.'' (Guess who?)
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Aug 13, 201275It plays out like a series wet-dream scenarios, performed by a cast of vintage action figures battered and broken from overuse, bleached and slightly molted from sitting in the sun too long.
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70Somehow all that testosterone-infused blow-'-em-up craziness turns out to be kind of a kick.
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70This muscle-bound meathead extravaganza is a sometimes blissfully cretinous endeavor, delivering the maximum firepower and zero brainpower its target audience expects.
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67As a film that even passingly acknowledges the disposability of stars in a genre whose artistic merits are considered negligible (if they're considered at all), The Expendables 2 is indispensable entertainment.
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63It's like a bath of stale testosterone as these Hollywood tough guys from the '80s swap references to their most famous movie lines. Their individual entrances are the primary pleasure of The Expendables 2.
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63On the whole, The Expendables 2 is more satisfying than "The Expendables."
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63More fun and somewhat more coherent than its Sylvester Stallone-directed predecessor, The Expendables 2 serves up a planeload of thickly sliced, well-aged beef and ham amid lots of stuff getting blown up.
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63The Expendables 2 is corny, barbaric and sometimes visually murky. But humor and self-deprecating macho charm make this male pattern badness crowd-pleasing fun.
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Aug 17, 201260The highlight is a bruising pas de deux between Statham and direct-to-video star Scott Adkins, a sequence that channels yesteryear's testosteronized cinema instead of exhuming it. You can only hope the inevitable third entry will use that as a model.
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60"2" works harder to land punches, but when it does, it provides the kind of fun it's fan base hopes for. But expectations, and targets, are lower all around.
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50Anyone who soldiered through "The Expendables," two years ago, will be touched, and a little surprised, to learn that there is more to expend. [3 Sept. 2012, p.79]
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50As it stands, The Expendables 2 is lazily satisfied with repeating the first movie's formula, shortcomings and grisly strengths alike.
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50Of course, the result is forgettable, but at least it's efficiently and breezily forgettable. What's more, there are laughs too and here's the best part – one or two of them are actually intentional.
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Aug 16, 201250Believe it or not, there's a strange kind of lifelessness to the movie that makes you wish it were dumber -- that it was more obnoxious and louder and crazier.
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50Mr. Norris arrives just as the blood baths and leaden dialogue are beginning to grow tedious, and his deadpan self-parody is pretty darn funny. More important, it gives you permission to laugh at the rest of this mindless movie, which is the only way to choke it down.
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50Does it all have to be so tedious? To the movie's credit, many of the inside jokes are pretty funny, and Mr. Lundgren is close to hilarious as a dissipated Swede named Gunner.
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50Like the 2010 original, The Expendables 2 is all sound and fury signifying nothing, when at the very least it should add up to big, dumb fun.
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42The Expendables 2 makes a franchise out of a novelty item, and the nostalgic kick is gone: It's a reminder that most of those '80s actioners were xenophobic and dumb, that many of its stars had more muscle mass than charisma, and that the sight of these old fossils referring to themselves as old fossils is more pathetic than cheekily self-referential.
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40Why make a new mediocrity when the old ones are still so much more fun to watch?
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Aug 17, 201240"Sometimes it's fun to run with the pack," counsels self-confessed lone wolf Chuck Norris. For the most part, you'd be well advised to choose the opposite direction.
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40There's some comedy in there, too, intentional – mostly. As a poignant study of the ageing process, it's on a rough par with "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel." For The Expendables 3, they might want to consider enlisting Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson and Judi Dench.
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40Has the parallel between the actor and the mercenary's trade ever been so overt?
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Aug 13, 201240A huge, bulging disappointment.
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Aug 15, 201235It isn't a movie - it's more like the world's most expensive, elaborate viral video, making a detour to the big screen before being broken up into more easily consumable segments to be consumed on YouTube.
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25Chuck Norris is also in this movie, although you should know that he gets roughly five minutes of screen time, half of those devoted to his telling of a Chuck Norris joke. That is as funny as the movie's self-aware humor gets.