The Expendables 2 –Geezers with Guns Redux

½* out of *****

Running time: 103 minutes

MPAA rating: R for strong bloody violence throughout.

There are no surprises to be found in The Expendables 2, the all-shooting, all-exploding, yet still excitement-deficient Sylvester Stallone testosterone fest showing in your neighborhood theater. Everything about it is predictable, overblown and cheesy. Nothing about is it subtle, nuanced or amusing.

Could it be the script? Expendables 2 is credited to Richard Wenk (The Mechanic) and Stallone, while three other writers share the story credit. So it took five contributors to create this muddle of clichés, sexist gags, tired in-jokes and gore by the gallon which is a sequel to the first Expendables film.

This edition brings back Stallone and his band of grizzled, late middle-aged movie stars and sports personalities who have reached the stage in their careers where they can no longer carry an “A” feature. Also in the cast are Jason Statham and Jet Li, who are genuine leading men in the current action movie field. Finally, perhaps because they wanted a couple of weeks of fun on the movie set, small cameo roles are filled by Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who smirk cozily through their roles.

The plot involves the quest by Stallone and his band of grouchy mercenaries to stop the arch-villain, Vilain (no, really) from selling a quantity of plutonium to the wrong type of individual.

To do this the aged gunslingers must brutally slaughter the maximum number of nameless minions the budget can provide while acquiring a mix of non-crippling bruises, cuts and scrapes on the exposed portions of their once-magnificent bodies.

The makeup department must have had plenty of time to painstakingly apply all those minor injuries because there were so many hours to fill while the special effects crew set up thousands of bullet hits and blood squibs. When the director, Simon West (who worked with Statham in The Mechanic), said, “Action,” the landscapes, sets and movie extras on locations in Bulgaria, Hong Kong and New Orleans were splattered with more stage and computer-generated blood than I can remember seeing in one feature film.