Friday August 13^th, 2010 was a strange weekend at the movies, with the kill loving action flick The Expendables and the videogame romantic love fest Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.  Personally, I was torn between my inner 80s action junkie (“Whoo! Stallone hitting people!”) and the part that really digs Edgar Wright and visual overload (“Whoo! Loud colourful strangeness!”)   So I saw both.  Didn’t see Eat, Pray, Love.  I just couldn’t.  Because of time constraints.

THE EXPENDABLES

3 out of 5

The enjoyable but not spectacular Expendables follows a team of mercenaries’ on a mission to overthrow a South American dictator (David Zayas) and rescue a damsel in distress (Gisele Itie). Led by Barney (Sylvester Stallone), the crew consists of Lee (Jason Statham), Yang (Jet Li), Toll (Randy Couture), Caesar (Terry Crews), Gunnar (Dolph Lundgren).  It’s a fun movie – Statham getting a text during a stand off is hilarious – with lots of deliberate mayhem. A type of flick where a character carrying a machine-gun is not enough, it has to be a combination machine gun/shot gun that rips unlucky henchmen in half.  Stallone, who is actually getting better as a visual director in his old age, creates a winking old-school throwback.  Rocky Balboa and Rambo were a bit serious; it’s nice to see him lighten up.  “Lightening up” still involves an astronomical body count. 

There are a lot of vintage 80s movie action stars sprinkled throughout, their age makes the character seem like grizzled veterans, but never on screen at once as the ads want you to believe. A lot of the movie is mostly Stallone and Statham, and neither is very compelling.  Lundren’s stoned merc disappears for most of the movie but he adds spice whenever he’s there. Mickey Rourke plays a wise old veteran and provides a well-acted but out-of-place monologue about the soul-killing horrors of war.  The ballyhooed meeting of Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis is barely a five-minute scene and the three are never in the same shot – it’s very likely Stallone shot them apart and tried to make them look like they were together editorially.  Each actor is having fun, especially Schwarzenegger.  And there’s an awesome, fourth-wall shattering one-liner about Arnold’s political aspirations.

The film lags severely when it’s not blowing stuff up.  There is way too much tedious stuff about conflict between the dictator and the suit (Eric Roberts) pulling his strings.  Things pick up whenever Stone Cold Steve Austin, playing one of the cronies, gets to be nasty but that happens rarely.  The movie’s is bookeneded by solid action sequences.  At one point Crews is ordered to blow up a building for possibly no other reason than to blow something up.  In the middle, Lundren and Li get a brutal fight, and there’s an inventive scene of cargo-plane vs. suckers on a dock that ends with a satisfying kaboom, but not much lives up to the action at the beginning and ending. This is entertaining, but it isn’t be the 80s action movie epilogue it tries to be. 

SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD

5 out of 5

While Expendables is a meat and potatoes flick, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a smorgasbord.  It’s a mash-up of several different stylistic influences, video games, rock musicals, comics, Japanese anime, romantic comedy, action flicks, all set to hyperdrive. If you can get into the film’s jacked-up vibe, you’ll enjoy it. If you can’t, it might come off as irritating.  Based on the comic book series by Canadian artist Brian Lee O’Malley and directed by Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz), Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) has fallen hopelessly in love with the rainbow coloured hairstyle Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) but to win her heart he has to engage in epic battles to the death with her seven evil exes.  It’s nice to see the movie set in Toronto, you can spot Pizza Pizza’s, Lee’s Palace, and Second Cup (they should have gone with Hortons, but why quibble). 

Cera is in every single scene, but this loser is finally different from the George Michael characterhe keeps repeating. Scott is a bit of an unlikely ladies man, and can actually kick ass when called for. Arrested Development fans can appreciate a fight between Cera and a goth lesbian played by Mae Whitman who was Cera’s girlfriend Anne on the show.  Winstead has toiled away in thankless supporting roles for years, but finally gets to be the lead as she plays the instantly lovable yet emotionally withdrawn Ramona.  There are lots of colourful supporting characters; Scott’s sarcastic gay roommate (Kieran Culkin), the laconic drummer of his band (Allison Pill), the angry Julie (Aubrey Plaza), and his jabbering cell-phone connected sister (Anna Kendrick).   All of the evil exes are have a distinct visual design, like Brandon Routh and Chris Evans as a super-powered musician vegan and a self-absorbed action star. Jason Schwarztman plays a perfect douche and his final monologue is one of the flick’s many highlights. 

The visuals are astounding. No two battles feel the same: there’s a pseudo-lightsaber fight, giant electricity beasts, Scott battling a horde of stunt men, and tons more. There’s no reason why all of these incredible fantasy action can take place, it’s not set in a dream world like Inception, but who cares? It looks awesome.  The style is heavily influenced by video-games, with extra lives, point totals, pre-battle sequence narrations, finishing moves and hardcore gamer nerds will notice music cues cribbed from “Legend of Zelda” and “Final Fantasy”, etc.  When Scott faces down his dark side of himself, it feels like a direct reference to Dark Link from Zelda, and the punchline to the scene is pure gold.  This is a live action comic with captions popping off the screen, and the crazy, frantic editing style fits with the tone of the movie, but Wright knows exactly when to slow things down for a laugh or a tender scene. Scott Pilgrim flies (sometimes quite literally) from one sequence to the next, and every frame displays something inventive. With so many different influences mashed together it becomes completely unique.  But the visual chaos pays off because the story about Scott longing for love rings emotionally true.

Expendables may provide satisfying bang, but its rote compared to how bug-crazy insane Scott Pilgrim is.  The first film is soulless, but the soul in Pilgrim makes it a winner. One of these movies is an okay time killer, and the other is one of the best flicks of 2010.  Like I said, really strange weekend at the movies.