Originally Posted August 25th, 2010

Come on. We all knew this was how it was going to turn out. No matter how badly we wanted to believe they could do it, too much time has passed. When we all heard that Sylvester Stallone was going to unite the biggest action heroes of the last thirty years under one blood-soaked banner, the internet's collective jubilation was laced with a deep-seated fear that this would be an impossible feat to pull off. In trying to recapture the spirit of the 80’s action flick, The Expendables plays more like a relic, just with modern trimmings. Its aging stars and uninspired script, which must have been about twenty pages if one-liners were excluded, make you wonder if this was a genre that should have just stayed put in the more reptilian crevices of your memory. Even when trying to deliver the gratuitous explosions and gunfire that made the likes of First Blood and Commando genre classics, The Expendables can’t get a grip on the advances of special effects, and sacrifices authenticity for the sake of one-upmanship.

After a ponderously slow first few minutes, we meet the titular group of manly-men mercenaries, including Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Randy “The Natural” Couture and the leader of the outfit, writer/director Sylvester Stone. The foreplay is brief, as it's mere moments after the introductions that a pirate is literally blown in half by a shotgun blast. You might say the dismemberment and copious CG blood are holdovers from Stone’s last directorial outing, Rambo, as it’s a good barometer for what the next hundred or so minutes are going to be like.

After successfully returning to their tattoo parlour/bar/all-around-man-cave run by Mickey Rourke, Sly accepts a suicide mission from a CIA handler played with deadly seriousness by Bruce Willis, in an overly advertised and far too brief scene featuring Stallone, Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger in the same room. It’s hard not to bro-out a little during the scene, as Schwarzenegger’s entrance is punctuated by an inexplicable divine light, while the winks and nods between the three great apes are telegraphed with the finesse of a bat to the face.

Being the good soldier of fortune that he is, Barney signs up the crew to take down a military dictator in the sinisterly named island nation of Vilena, where there’s some scheme involving coke fields, an ex-CIA spook and Steve Austin. There are betrayals, unrequited loves and perfunctory speeches about the soulless life of a mercenary, none of which are handled with much subtlety, but subtlety isn’t what this movies about now is it? It’s about shit blowing up, bones being busted, SMASH-BAM-POW-GAAAR. Which isn’t so much The Expendables's only redeeming trait as it is pretty much its only trait period.

This is an action movie from start to finish, so it won’t confuse anyone who accidentally walked in thinking this was Eat Pray Love. To his credit, Stallone knows how to stage shoot-outs and fist-fights, and boy are there plenty. The number of baddies disposed of by Stallone’s motley crew borders on genocidal, and it’s a rare feat that an action scene can be so skilfully chaotic that a man’s head literally blowing up isn’t the centre of attention. The action is by no means flawless, as all the gunfire and exploding can be desensitizing by the time the film reaches its bombastic final twenty minutes, and a pair of car chases in the film’s first half may be some of the worst filmed in recent memory.

What really holds back blood-n-guts orgy are the attempts made to use newer special effects to beef up the skirmishes, the apparent aim being to make every other action movie obsolete. It was probably because of Rambo that Stallone decided you could get more blood for less by adding it in during post-processing. And hey, while we’re at it, why not get rid of the rigidity inherent in actual explosions and just code it for cheap? It’s understandable really, audiences just aren’t wowed by violence the way they once were and the solution is always just to add more and more. But in doing so, The Expendables betrays the very films it seeks to honour. Sure John McClane only blows away about a dozen dudes in Die Hard, but it looked real. When the roof of the Nakatomi Plaza blew up, you were watching a giant explosion consume a building and it felt real. With TheExpendables, the sheer overload of the set pieces combined with the CG effects, which range from passable to laughable, dissolves what little sense of reality the film wants to maintain.

This wouldn’t be quite so frustrating if the movie were good at anything besides action, but Stallone’s words don’t flow nearly as well as his fists. When your characters are a biker gang of Neanderthals, there’s no real room for character development, and attempts at being reflective about the whole killing business feel shoehorned in. The greater shame is that the film’s many, many one-liners, a staple of the genre, are almost entirely forgettable, and it doesn’t help that between various accents and Stallone’s growling that much of the line delivery can be tough to interpret. But again, brilliant writing isn’t one of the things The Expendables is aiming to achieve and it looks to supplement words with casting. Despite his noticeably aged face, Stallone’s giant everythings ensure he’s who you imagine leading a suicide squad of mercs, and Statham brings his trademark frame and charm to what few scenes he’s in that require actual acting. It’s a hell of a crew Stallone’s assembled, almost to a fault. Crews is under-utilized and it’s easy to forget that Couture is even in this movie, although he does once and for all finish the debate between the UFC and WWE fans.

Be wary of advertisements claiming that this will be the first and only time we’re going to see such a macho medley of beefheads join forces, as receipts have been strong and the film’s ending presents future jobs for The Expendables as a certainty (which also enforces how much of a misnomer their title is). But what could have been a testosterone fuelled tribute to filmmaking of years past turned out to be a retread that simply drags out a genre and cast that’s just not as youthful as it once was. You got me this time Stallone, but by invoking the hallowed images of your past works and actors like you, you set yourself up to sit in the shadows of the classics that defined the action movie. And no amount of CG blood can cover that up.

2 out of 5

Directed by Sylvester Stallone

2010, USA

Originally Posted July 6th, 2010

On reflection, Lost in Translation has about as short a plot description as you can manage for a 100-minute movie. Guy goes to Japan, guy meets girl, guy and girl explore Tokyo, guy leaves. There's not much all that much to the plot, but that's not to say that nothing happens. Director Sophia Coppola seems content to let her film meander about, almost purposelessly, but it’s a wandering experience built on characters and locations with entrancing magnetism.

Bill Murray plays Bob Harris, an aging movie star whose career and marriage are passed their prime. The latest stop on his star's descent is a commercial shoot in Japan, an embarrassment perhaps only known to him, as every handler, hotel worker or fan that enters his orbit still glad-hands him like his best years happened only yesterday. His wife sends him carpet swatches halfway around the world to make sure his study has the right shade of burgundy. Bob accepts his life with a sarcasm that’s sadder than it is biting, telling jokes to an audience that doesn’t speak his language. The salad days are behind him and it seems he’s all laughed out. So in essence, Bob is Bill Murray, which is a good thing, because Bill Murray is really great at playing Bill Murray.

Most performances are based on the actor disappearing into the part, but here, Murray’s performance is all the more affecting because you feel like you’re watching him as opposed to a character. Barflies and passers-by approach him and gush over how much they love his work. He sees his faced plastered across skyscrapers and vehicles. The viewer has to wonder how many times such things have happened to Murray in real life, and how it must feel to be constantly reminded of your public persona. Even the names of the actor and character are suspiciously similar. As Harris, Murray brings the kind of honesty and vulnerability that make it obvious why Coppola wouldn’t have made the film without him.

Murray’s counterpart is Charlotte (Johansson), a young philosophy graduate dealing with an equally lifeless marriage. She jokes about Bob’s midlife crisis even though she’s hit hers a few decades too early. Charlotte is part of a generation of creatives who are given the world on a platter, but can’t seem to find their place in it. She’s self-critical as a writer, and wryly observes that being a photographer is just a phase all girls go through, “like horses”. There are numerous shots of Charlotte staring out of her hotel window at the Tokyo cityscape, looking for something, even if she's not sure what that something is yet.

Self-discovery in a foreign land is an enticing little fantasy. The idea of breaking out of one's established culture by absorbing the best parts of another is what kept Eat, Pray, Love on bestseller lists for three years. Coppola recognizes and attacks such an impractical solution to personal identity with both humour and frankness. The idea of fast-food cultural consumption is best satirized via an oblivious young starlet played by Ana Faris, who incorporates aspects of Japanese culture into her identity with seemingly little understanding of what they actually mean. When Charlotte admits to feeling nothing after watching a Japanese ceremony, foreign religion being the sort of fashionable thing sightseers pick up like a fake accent, it becomes clear that the setting of the film is merely incidental; this is a film about connecting with people, not places.

With so much of the actual developments happening internally, the real action in Lost in Translation plays out in the repartee between Bob and Charlotte, which starts with the usual complaints about American-Japanese culture clash. Bob cracks jokes about Japan’s food and language while Charlotte seems to be the only person capable of talking to Bob Harris the person instead of Bob Harris the movie star. Coppola writes maybe one or two too many of these “ain’t Japan weird” scenes, but they reinforce the alienation of the characters and how much of a relief one another’s company is. Their conversations gradually become less sweetly sardonic and more personal the longer the two are together . In the film’s most pivotal scene, the pair lay in bed side by side as Charlotte confesses to being stuck in life, with Bob giving advice as best he can. Coppola is content to just let camera hang over them as Charlotte stares up at the hotel ceiling, which doesn't seem so bland and empty when you're sharing it with the right person.

It’s easy to see where the film’s setup could lead, but thankfully, Coppola knows exactly what her movie is about. Her characters have emotional problems and they need an emotional respite, not a physical one. Whatever amount of sexual tension there is for the viewer to decide, Charlotte’s looks serving mostly as a contrast to Bob’s, her baby blues opposite his pale, weary eyes. Their age difference is largely inconsequential, save for some ribbing at Bob’s expense, and in place of a May-December romance, we get a friendship between two people at the same place in different seasons of their lives.

The other real star of Lost in Translation is Japan, which is a constant marvel to watch. The muted tones of the hotel seem a paradox when housed in the otherwise vibrant downtown of Tokyo. When Bob first enters the city, there’s a childlike fascination in his face as he stares out at a city that’s half New York, half circus. As the leads share drinks in a bar early on, the bright lights of the Shinjuku ward broadcast the sleepless activity just outside. The frenetic neon sprawl of the city is juxtaposed with a trip to Kyoto which is almost otherworldly in its tranquility. There’s a regimented pace to each set piece, almost as if the camera is acting as a tour guide, pinpointing all the major highlights. Japan is captured with such loving detail that it’s hard to think about the film being set anywhere else, despite the story's freeform nature.

Coppola’s film has no great dramatic twist, and instead just focuses on how two very sad people make each other’s lives a little more bearable. Yet there’s a cruel aftertaste to every laugh shared between Bob and Charlotte, because it’s known from the beginning that this is a relationship that isn’t meant to last. When the two finally do say goodbye, it’s a moment of almost unparalleled bittersweetness. For a film to make you feel anything by the end is an achievement, but Lost in Translation manages to stir your emotions on two fronts, leaving you heartbroken at the sight of such a beautiful friendship ending, but also joyful, because you got to experience it.

5 out of 5

Directed by Sophia Coppola

2003, USA