The Expendables 2: Review By Zak Lee Ferguson

Totally unexpected surprise to exit the theatre and think this is second to top my favourite film list. This film is just magmatic, totalitarian butch machine gun riddled fist punching raw ass slapping grain and gravel and shrapnel cascading nostalgic trip. Simon West here replaces Stallone and does a pure adrenaline fuelled and quite often tender film, it's neither preachy or as lame assed politically as the first, which to be honest packed a punch but did not hold an envisioned materialised uniqueness. This film centralises on the themes of pure action, stopping them, Tracking finding and killing, the story limp but abundantly character based, performances on top form, and the film is beautifully shot on stock film from the Eighties period. West has a great C.V from Con-Air to many more previously the limp but still enjoyable The Mechanic but here he has gears, fuel, muscle, muscle, guns, tanks, and a bigger more rampant budget. Throughout I found no flaw, not one in dialogue or story or testing in its fast pace, all fights choreographed with precision, though big names fall small in slender spots like Li who sadly makes a Cameo appearance and yes you do get your bucks worth with Willis, of whom I'm iffy with but now I'm backslapping, Sly more graced with trying to act and give a plot a tenderness instead of heap loads of work like his previous regime held back in 09-2010.

The film is fun, it has a very brooding menacing villain, its domain and vastness epic, it's scaled and fast and clear footed, never preachy and underlined with such a subject matter that is handled well in the likes of Rambo but with the set up and links and characters so warped and unsentimental at times in the first and broad shouldered and tired out- political nuance doesn't deposit itself in their realms and either Sly Stallone was trying to get at something in the first it held nothing. This is guts tearing, decapitation per every five minutes explosive feature that is directed fondly, tracking, slick, vast, grumpy, brooding, intimate, and just epic instead of feeling planned and projected from Sly's own noggin West gives it its vastness, its epic scale with long shots, in camera effects and an acuteness for reverberating pace and time slots, the conversations and divisions situated and deposited then the action delivered.

The films main aim is to have a laugh- with some great lines- of which are graced with a repertoire between Willis and Arnold of whom steals the show, skilled, butch, having a laugh, stemmed, happy with his position to laugh at himself with Bruce and Sly, all knowing that to recreate a nostalgic piece that feels as real and precocious as it is with references and in jokes and Easter eggs and pure mockery benefits the audience to give them gratitude and permission to submit to this spectacle that it is just purely fun. A great villain, a great ride, a great entrance into A HOPFULLY CONTINUED SERIES WITH West at the helm.

See it enjoy it, Van Damme's thrilling as the monstrous and ass kicking slick villain, the only down play looking back is, you want more from the characters though it does leave you feeling sparse, but that's just due course for more Expendables to extendable's from...;)