During the 1980s and early 1990s, I watched entirely more films than was good for me, thanks to the video cassette. One type of film of which I saw more than my fair share were action movies - pumped up alpha males like Arnie, Sly and Van Damme staring out of the covers in impossibly butch ways. An enterprising neighbour ran a video store out of his garage (goodness knows how) and I rented all manner of age-inappropriate videos in the times before the BBFC got involved with classifying cassettes.
In the height of the "video-nasties" boom, my friend Iain (now a respectable member of Swindon Borough Council, I believe) used to get pirate copies of banned videos and I spent my formative years watching Cannibal Holocaust, I Spit on Your Grave, The House by the Cemetery and the like. It did me no harm (twitch, twitch) and gave me a love of horror movies that abides to this day - I watched VHS recently and it brought some of those old memories back.
In my early twenties, I went through a bit of a body-building phase and used to buy various magazines that promised to show me how I could look like Arnold (never Arnie in these magazines - show some respect), or Flex Wheeler or Dorian Yates. I would hit the sweatiest gym in Swindon and train as hard as I could in the hopes of packing on a bit of muscle - I even trained occasionally with an amateur bodybuilder who was a bit of a celebrity on the local circuit, although he left me in the dust, quite honestly. I still think body builders are the most committed and dedicated of athletes; body building is a punishing sport and greatly admire those who compete.
Anyway, all of this is the sort of stuff I was thinking about whilst watching The Expendables 2. Last year, all the big 1980s and 1990s video stars got together and made a movie, called The Expendables. Some have aged well - Bruce Willis, Jean Claude Van Damme - others less so - in particular Sly himself (who doesn't so much speak as sub-sonically rumble) and Dolph Lundgren, who is looking a touch too Mickey Rourke for my liking nowadays.
The Expendables made money (which was pretty much all that was asked of it) and was generally well received and so they got together and made another movie. I saw it yesterday and was going to come on here and whale on it but when the time came I realised that I didn't hate it. I didn't understand bits of it: why play the theme from The Good, The Bad and the Ugly every time Chuck Norris appeared? Where did the plane come from? But I didn't hate it, like I half expected to.
It was lazy, to be sure, repeating the same "saved in the nick of time by someone turning up out of the blue" trick three times but it wasn't too boring, it wasn't too offensive; it just came and went and didn't outstay its welcome. Should you see it? It's not the worst film you'll ever see but perhaps your time might be better spent re-watching one of those old 1980s/1990s actioners, to see these guys in their prime.
No comments:
Post a Comment