THE EXPENDABLES A Few Good Men
Gun-toting, muscle-bound, ass-kicking machines: the stars of The Expendables are some of the biggest names in action, but is it just nostalgia that’s got everyone excited, or is the hard man movie star back for good, asks Roberto Carnevale?
O nce upon a time in Hollywood, back during the mid 80s and early 90s, the action movie was dominated by hard men who hit first, quipped second and then thought about asking questions later. They usually starred Sylvester Stallone (Rocky, Rambo, Cobra, Cliffhanger), Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Terminator, Commando, Predator) or Bruce Willis (Die Hard, The Last Boy Scout), they almost always boasted supremely high body counts and there was usually a token damsel-in-distress that required saving. But then, suddenly, they became expendable.
A new era of Hollywood action movie was marked by the return of the superhero (Batman, Spider-Man, et al), a more teen- friendly focus and a new type of ass-kicking everyman – one able to balance sensitivity with intelligence as well as physicality –
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leading the action. The real hard men went into politics, developed a sixth sense for better roles or disappeared onto DVD. Their supposed replacements in the straightforward kick, punch, shoot genre – men’s men like Jet Li, Jason Statham and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson – struggled to command the same box office clout as their predecessors. So, with the passing of those three box office giants had the action movie entered a new phase? Has the day of the super-sized action hero been over since the mid 90s?
Perhaps not, for while box office is no longer comparable to the size of a leading man’s biceps, there are still signs that there’s room for them in this CGI-driven, demographically correct marketplace. Indeed, you only have to look at the groundswell of excitement that followed Stallone’s announcement of his ‘ultimate action movie ensemble’, The
Expendables, to suggest that the hard man’s day isn’t quite done. Movie fans collectively cheered as a roster of names from Mickey Rourke to Dolph Lundgren via Steve Austin were added to a cast that already included Stallone, Statham, Li, Willis and Schwarzenegger. Director and star Stallone promised a testosterone-driven nostalgia trip overloaded with macho posturing, bone-crunching action and women just waiting to be rescued – a full- blooded, old-school riposte to the teen- friendly antics of The A-Team or the ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ level- headedness of Marvel’s men in costumes. And so it proves that much of the fun in watching The Expendables lies in seeing past favourites squaring up to each other and letting the macho rhetoric run riot.