Rocky

The Rocky series has kind of a silly reputation, because it's probably the most heavily milked Best Picture-winning series of all time. But the original film is justified in winning the award (thought it wouldn't be my pick), and it's really quite a good movie. It's a series of boxing movies, but the original is a movie about a boxer. That's a significant distinction, and it's why the film works. It's two hours long, and there are only two matches, one at the beginning, and one at the end. It doesn't exist to show Sylvester Stallone as a conquering hero with impressive musculature, but rather as a bum who makes the best of the one chance he gets. Stallone is lumped in with a lot of the other meathead action movie actors, but he's the only one I've ever seen write a good script like this and play such a vulnerable underdog of a character. Really good work by a guy who's content to make roid-fueled bloody extravaganzas these days.

So Rocky Balboa is a past-his-prime boxer who earns a living roughing people up for a loan shark. He still fights sometimes for extra money, and tries to talk with the mousy pet shop employee who sold him his turtles, and who's the sister of his drunkard meat packing friend. The owner of his boxing club hates him for missing out on his potential, and he lives alone in a crummy apartment in Philadelphia. But he gets a big break when Carl Weathers' Apollo Creed needs an opponent for his Bicentennial boxing exhibition, and essentially picks Rocky's name out of a hat of local fighters. So Rocky tries to get his act together, starts a relationship with the girl, and trains his hardest for the fight, which is only a few weeks away. I was impressed with how strong the character work was in general. His relationships with his friend and trainer are both difficult, as the former feels he isn't getting his due and the latter has shared a mutual disappointment with him for years. It's good stuff, and the boxing is really just a backdrop for a guy trying to get his life on some sort of track. The last fight is appropriately dramatic and brutal, and the ending is perfect, going back to it being about the people and not who wins. I don't expect a whole lot from the many sequels but I'll probably watch them all eventually anyway, just out of curiosity.

The Expendables

The Expendables is kind of weird, because in some ways it delivers on its promise of over-the-top 80s style action with a giant cast of movie veterans, and in some ways it doesn't. I definitely liked it, but I feel that it also could have been much better. The problem is the question of how seriously the movie takes itself. If the movie was straight-up homage to what movies used to be and maybe more tongue-in-cheek, it might have been better. But you get the feeling that Sly Stallone was being completely genuine in his attempt to bring back the glory days, and in that light it's not as successful. I mean, as far as replicating what's come before, he pulled it off. The problem is that those movies were rarely actually very good, and the script at work here is pretty damn weak. It gets made up for a bit by the advancements we've made in filming entertaining violence, but it's certainly a flawed movie.

Sylvester is the leader of a crack team of guns for hire, featuring knife expert Jason Statham, martial arts expert Jet Li, betrayal expert Dolph Lundgren, giant ridiculous automatic shotgun expert Terry Crews, and Randy Couture. Stallone is the only one whose character is really drawn beyond a very brief sketch, and while the rest of them all have what could be described as character traits, they're really just there to help blow things up. Even the second in command Statham is basically playing Action Star Jason Statham, with the only thing trying to avoid this being one of the most pointless subplots ever. Here's what it consists of: Scene 1. He goes home to his girl (played by Cordelia from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and surprises her with a ring, but he finds out she's seeing another guy. Scene 2: He finds out the guy hits her, so he kicks his and his friends' asses on a basketball court and then drives off with her on his bike. Then she disappears from the movie.

And that's by far the most anybody besides Sly gets to do outside action scenes. Lots of guys get small parts, there's a fun scene where Sly gets a mission from Bruce Willis and has some half-witty repartee with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Mickey Rourke forgets what movie he's in and acts his ass off delivering a monologue that helps Sly figure out what he has to do. Eric Roberts is an enjoyable smarmy villain, Batista from Dexter is the foreign general whose army is getting taken advantage of, and Stone Cold is menacing enough as the king henchman. So there's a lot of recognizable faces, and they all seem to be having fun kicking each other's asses. The action is surprisingly well choreographed, featuring an entertaining mix of guns, hand to hand beatings, and giant explosions. Unfortunately this is mired a bit by how dark the movie is, especially in the climactic scenes, and a tendency to match the current trend of very quick cuts despite the old pedigree, which occasionally makes the super violence a bit hard to see. So it's an action movie without a good story to prop it up, and the action isn't perfect either. But like I said, I mostly enjoyed it, laughing out loud on numerous occasions while acknowledging that it wasn't actually a very good film. Which is fine, it certainly could have been much worse. Personally, I'm hoping for a sequel with more Dolph, Arnie, and Bruce. And some decent lighting.