“Knock, knock!” That was the sound of my conscience warning me of the metaphorical 40mm grenade shell that was “The Expendables 2,” crashing through my heart and blowing my hopes and dreams into a million pieces. Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris, Bruce Willis, and Sylvester Stallone team up to kill a bunch of terrorists lead by Jean Claude Van Damm, and I walked out of the theatre saying “That was alright.”
It’s a sin, and although I wouldn’t exactly say it was terrible, I’m not going to recommend it. However, I would like to bring the grand-daddy of all action movies, and one that actually got “The Expendables” concept right, back into the spotlight: “Predator.”
Lots of people have seen “Predator,” but to my disappointment, even more people have not. Females are almost excused from this, but “men,” as they might call themselves, are not. “Predator” is hands down the manliest movie in the history of film, and watching it should be considered a right of passage. It should be held equal with learning to drive or the first time a guy has to shave. A male who hasn’t seen “Predator” isn’t really a man yet, he’s just a walking bag of bones with Y chromosomes and no hope.
The storyline isn’t exactly a Christopher Nolan-level masterpiece, but it doesn’t need to be. Arnold, Carl Weathers, Jessie Ventura, Bill Duke, Sonny Landham, and two other guys who aren’t as important grab some guns the size of European cars, do the manliest secret handshake ever and jump into a helicopter to go blow up some bad guys. That’s what happens when you mess with America.
After the bad guys have all been killed by either the unending hail of bullets or the equally vast onslaught of terrible one-liners, Arnold finds out the whole mission was a lie. While the team is waiting for the chopper to come pick them up, an invisible alien starts stalking them through the jungle and blowing holes through people with a laser.
From then on, the stupidly awesome commandos are trapped in the jungle, trying to fend it off with the power of 20 inch biceps and enough hardware to literally level the surrounding landscape. It’s beautiful.
The best example of exactly how awesome this movie is comes at the start of the first action scene. Arnold dead-lifts an 18 wheeler off a set of cinder blocks, straps some explosives onto the back of it and rolls it down a hill into a storage shed for barrels full of gasoline that the bad guys happen to have for some reason. I’d say that they should abandon conventional bowling and change the rules so that everyone has to do it exactly like that, but the scene is so glorious that it could only happen once. Assuming his head didn’t explode as soon as he had written down the last word, the guy who dreamt up that sequence most likely retired on that very day, knowing that he’d never be able to top it. Just watching it will make your neck 5 percent thicker.
I’ve put a lot of emphasis on how manly this movie is, but I’d recommend it to anyone. It’s fun, there’s never a dull moment, it had an all star cast of action heroes, all the characters are interesting, and it’s a classic for a reason. However, any non-female wasting the air of greater men to form their idle, pre “Predator” thoughts needs to find a copy and watch it this very second. It’s a far better use of an hour and a half than wasting away on the computer catching up on memes.
The Command BROst is a weekly blog by staff writer Noah Hutchinson.
