Double Feature: The Expendables' Report Card

In 2010, The Expendables reminded us how much we love old school action movies. Even more, it reintroduced to a generation the explosive stars of yesteryear, and proved to be a renaissance for aging actors Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Dolph Lundgren. But while we all marveled at the bombastic, over-the-top exploits and strangely hypnotic violence of that release (and, albeit to a lesser extent, the 2012 sequel), The real rest for Stallone and crew is whether they can take that momentum and channel it into legitimate career resurgence.

Ah, old-school action flicks. Where men are manly, women exist only in various states of undress, and the hero can get away with all his misdeeds without any consequence whatsoever. That's the world of Bullet to the Head, the first film directed by Walter Hill since 2002's Undisputed. Based on the French graphic novel "Du Plomb Dans La Tete", it follows veteran hitman and New Orleans resident Jimmy Bobo (Stallone), who has been double-crossed by his anonymous employer and vows revenge. While he reluctantly teams up with Washington police Detective Taylor Kwon (Sung Kang), who is after the same people, there's no doubt that Jimmy's take-no-prisoners approach will grind against Kwon's law and order methodology. But while both are being targeted by a ruthless crime lord (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and his sadistic enforcer (Jason Momoa), they must work together if they want any chance of getting out of this mess alive.

I never want to see this image again...

The problem with Bullet to the Head (yes, I'm getting right to it) is that the movie takes itself far too seriously. It follows a typical buddy cop formula, but doesn't have any of the ribald humor you'd associate with the genre. Stallone and Kang regularly exchange barbs, but they're all mean-spirited, racist and sexist to the point where you enjoy the scenes in which they are alone more than when they deign to recognize one another. The characters are at least honest with themselves about the kinds of men they are, but when there's no potential for a friendship to develop between them, what's the point? It wouldn't be so bad if the action upped the ante, but its obvious Hill is out of practice as a director, as all the production credits in the world won't help you line up a decent shot. Bullet to the Head wants to be a noire thriller in the vein of a modern-set Gangster Squad but doesn't have the chutzpa to have the same amount of fun as that cast and crew had on the set.

This was all the work he could get after Conan...

I'm not sure which actor the film wastes more; Sarah Shahi, who is at least decent as Jimmy's artist/former med student daughter, or Jason Momoa, who is electric but stifled as the generic bad guy who is destined to be killed by a man half his size and twice his age. Either way, Bullet to the Head is the complete antithesis of the Expendables titles. Not one ounce of fun can be had here, unless you desperately want to see bloody action and missed out on the far superior The Last Stand, which has already been run out of a lot of theaters. Even then, there's a much better option out there than the #9 movie of 2013.

Okay, so "much better" is somewhat a subjective term. After all, Jason Statham vehicle Parker isn't all that different from his more recent fare, and only pops in at #7 for the year, not far removed from Bullet to the Head. In Parker, based on the book "Flashfire" by Donald Westlake, Statham plays the titular hero, an honest man in a dishonest business. He's a thief, one of the best, and when he is double crossed by his team after a successful heist he is left for dead on the side of a dirt road. But Parker recovers, swearing revenge on the men who wronged him, no matter what kind of criminal connections they may have. To succeed, he'll need the help of a financially-struggling real estate agent (Jennifer Lopez) who can help open the right doors in Palm Beach, the location of the traitorous Melander (Michael Chiklis) and his next job. The cash up for grabs? $75 million.

In a couple of ways, Taylor Hackford's Parker is a bit like Bullet to the Head, in that they're both headed by violent, unrepentant anti-heroes who have no problem killing those who wrong them. On top of that, each have out-of-their-element partners who really don't have a lot to do unless they're in the same scene as the protagonist. Jennifer Lopez for instance has little to do but be a sexy sidekick, and her presence only adds unneeded drama to an overly-simple story. You literally could have any person in this role for success, with only Lopez' supposedly-insured buttocks differentiating her from the typical Hollywood starlet. To be fair, she does do well in the "comedy relief" department, but then so do most third-rate actors. Still, the action is fiercer, the fights feel less forced, and overall people act exactly in the ways you might expect real people to behave. It's not a bad screenplay, even with its glaring flaws.

Statham getting the ladies feels more natural...

But Parker's flaws are most definitely still there. The romantic subtext between Parker and Lopez' Leslie Rogers is doomed to failure from the beginning (and we know it) and yet we're forced to sit through the whole mess. Michael Chiklis is stretched as a main bad guy, which might have been all that was open to him after the failure of the Fantastic Four franchise. And while at least Bullet to the Head used practical effects to create its bloody mayhem, Parker's use of digital blood is notable in that it's plainly obvious that the blood splatter was cooked up in a computer lab. It's cheap-looking and really takes the viewer out of the experience just when things start to get good.

Yup, it's "Clobberin' Time."

It's easy to see why the distributors of Bullet to the Head and Parker released their movies so early this year. These are low-budget action flicks so far removed from the tentpole titles of the summer Iron Man 3, Star Trek Into Darkness and Elysium that they seriously pale in comparison. Add in the fact that Stallone and Statham have never been BIG box office draws (not alone in comparison to bigger stars, anyway) and appeal to only small, niche audiences, and the recent lack of interest in their returns is understandable. These are guys putting out more of the same, uninspired crud that went out with the Dodos and their previous careers. Both have done better. Both could do so again. But we might be waiting a while before we expect anything fun to come from this pair of aging action stars.

Drifting Away

I remember seeing the first Ice Age film back in 2002. It was a resurgent time for animated films, with the likes of Shrek and Monsters Inc. having set new, high standards for cartoon entertainment, and the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature was was created to finally give recognition to the artistic importance of these movies. Compared to the excellence of titles like Lilo & Stitch, Ice Age was a fine, if not particularly special, release that focused on the survival of mammals during the Paleolithic ice age. I remember LIKING Ice Age, but also thinking that there was no real reason to revisit the lives of Manny the woolly mammoth (Ray Romano), Sid the Sloth (John Leguizamo) and Diego the smilodon (Dennis Leary). That's why I've effectively avoided the film's first two sequels over the past decade, and also why only the first Ice Age received a nomination for Best Animated Feature (it lost to Spirited Away), while the others have earned just middling reviews. Still, the series has proved popular with the kids, so Manny and company are back in Ice Age: Continental Drift, and I was just curious enough to see what the three heroes have been up to in the past ten years.

Bet he's starting to look a little tasty right now...

After starting off with the dialogue-less The Longest Daycare starring Maggie Simpson (a wry and fun short), we discover that things have certainly changed for our heroes. No longer alone in the world, Manny has found Ellie, the love of his life (Queen Latifah), and the two have a teenage daughter named Peaches (Keke Palmer), who is just beginning to discover boys. Sid is briefly reunited with the family that abandoned him, only to have them drop off his elderly grandmother Granny (Wanda Sykes) before quickly escaping again. Soon Scrat the saber-toothed squirrel (about the only reason this series has lasted as long as it has) is up to his usual antics, finding a place to bury his beloved acorn. When this action causes the breakup of Pangaea into the continents we now know, our Manny, Sid and Diego are separated from their herd on a small, uncontrollable iceberg. Soon Manny and his crew (alongside Granny, who accidentally tags along for the ride) find themselves the targets of pirates, led by the gorilla Captain Gutt (Peter Dinklage) and his feline first mate Shira (Jennifer Lopez). It's a race home for our heroes, who won't let anything get between Manny and the reuniting of his family.

Look, it's the foreign box office! Start paddling!

I'll give this to the new Ice Age; the animation is much better than I expected. All the previews I have seen had led me to believe that the computer animation, especially the background art, would pale in comparison to other recent contemporary fare, even less than mediocre titles Kung Fu Panda 2 or Puss in Boots. Fortunately, what looks like bad animation on small screens actually comes to life on the big ones. It's still nothing in comparison to anything you've seen in a Pixar title, but the backgrounds are amazingly lifelike, and the character animations are fluid and spotless.

His heart, it breaks.

Sadly the story is what really lacks any depth, though this does have the benefit of making it easy for the children in the audience to follow along. Manny and company's story pits them consistently against Gutt's pirates, with apparently no other major predators residing in the middle of the ocean. Meanwhile the biggest story on the mainland is not escaping the slow moving rock wall that threatens to wipe out the herd, but Peaches' discovery that the boy she has a crush on is not all he turns out to be. Meanwhile Scrat's story is more out of favor than usual, and while he is still the film's most entertaining character, his skits are far closer in quality to the rest of the story than they used to be. Or maybe I'm just getting older. But where the story lacks depth it makes up for in honesty, as the motivations and desires of all the main characters is easy enough to follow for both adults and their kids.

Not the kind of people you want to meet in the middle of the ocean.

Directors Steve Martino and Mike Thurmeier also do a great job putting together a cast that, with very few exceptions, feel at home in this ice-cold world. Still, this film wasn't a challenge for everyone. While the returning Romano, Leary, and Latifah had to just be themselves, only Leguizamo and newcomers Palmer and Josh Gad feel as though they're playing actual characters in a story. Still, the interplay between Manny, Sid and Diego more than makes up for any lack of creativity on the actors' side, and Latifah and Palmer hold their own in their storyline. The pirates are also a lively bunch, featuring the talented voices of Dinklage (the image of Tyrion Lannister playing a giant gorilla makes me smile inside), Nick Frost, Aziz Ansari and Rebel Wilson in what might be the best additions to the franchise. And Sykes has the perfect voice and comedic timing to make her character even more timeless as Scrat. But not everyone's inclusion was a slam dunk; when did Jennifer Lopez become so DRY a performer? Shira's potential romance with Diego means little when you just don't care about her, no matter how many cliched transformations the villain-turned-hero undergoes. And why did the producers bother going through the casting and promoting of musical artists Drake and Nicki Minaj when the pair would do so little, and not even all that well? These gripes are thankfully limited, and the cast on the whole does what needs to be done to make the film an entertaining experience.

I know who I'm rooting for.

In the end, Ice Age:Continental Drift ends up quite close in quality to this past June's Madagascar 3. That's not too bad a place to be, as most animated films released this year have been somewhat underwhelming, even the admittedly highly-anticipated Brave. Only time will tell how well we remember this latest Ice Age outing, but this was certainly better than some of the award-nominated fare in the last few years, and the franchise is still popular enough to churn out a few more sequels. I can actually recommend this one to adults as well as kids, and that's probably the best thing I've ever said about an animated film in 2012.