Review. Review on The Expendables 2 Movie

Robbie Collin is appalled to find him enjoying himself as Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Willis team up for action extravaganza The Expendables 2.

Readers may be wondering if a knowledge of the original Expendables film, Sylvester Stallone’s blunt-edged billet-doux to Eighties American action cinema, is required for this second instalment to make sense. The answer is no: it makes very little sense either way. As before, Stallone plays Barney Ross, the Grand Poo-Bah of a squad of ageing muscle-men who are deployed to the world’s troubled spots, where they make things considerably worse.

When we first clap eyes on his team — Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), Hale Caesar (Terry Crews) and the rest — they are marauding through Burma in a home-made tank, hosing bullets at junta troops who pop like microwaved marshmallows.

This is merely the amuse-bouche: later, the enigmatic Mr Church (Bruce Willis) dispatches the Expendables to Eastern Europe, where they are entrusted with the recovery of five tons of weapons-grade plutonium.

Also hunting the nuclear material is a villain played by Jean-Claude Van Damme, whose name is Vilain for the avoidance of ambiguity. This man is so sinister, he wears sunglasses while down a mine.

Barney recruits some new members to fight the good fight: Maggie (Nan Yu), who in a shocking double twist, is both Chinese and female; Billy (Liam Hemsworth), a shining-eyed, soon-to-be-married young sniper who might as well have a giant target painted on his chest; and Trench (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a former rival of Barney’s whose role has been amusingly expanded from his brief cameo in the first film.

There is a lot of shooting. When the shooting stops, there is a lot of joking. Then there is a lot of roaring, particularly from Stallone, whose character smokes cigars the size of kitchen rolls and has a voice like an outboard motor churning custard.

In the ultimate Eighties throwback, director Simon West (Con Air) stages the stunts and explosions in camera, rather than recreating them with computer graphics, which gives proceedings a flame-grilled authenticity. I was thoroughly appalled, mainly at myself for enjoying it.