Category: Random Nonsense

In a word, bad.

I’m warning you now, this could be considered a “spoiler” in so far as I discuss things that happen in the film that are crucial to the “plot.”

Nothing about this movie made any sense to me.

1. Bruce Willis hires Sylvester Stalone to do a job and threatens him with consequences if he doesn’t do the job.  Stalone doesn’t do the job.  No mention of Willis or the consequences ever occurs.
2. Schwarzenegger shows up in person to spend less than a minute to insult Stalone and refuse a job.  Doesn’t he have a cell, a computer, or fax machine?
3. Eric Roberts is a bad guy ex-CIA agent who is using Angel, the cop from Dexter, as his puppet dictator on a small island.  He uses every opportunity to insult and undermine this dictator in front of the dictator’s men, for no apparent reason.  Why is this a good idea?
4. Stalone and Jason Statham go to the island to investigate the job from Willis and meet a woman, the daughter of the General (played by Angel, the cop from Dexter).  She takes them to a hill that overlooks… nothing?  The general’s men show up, yell at her for being there, and then proceed to drag her off.  Stalone and Statham waste the General’s men and drve off with the General’s daughter.  Although no one has called Roberts’ or his men, they suddenly jump in their truck and drive towards they think Stalone, Staham, and the General’s daughter are driving to.  Why are they driving there?  Why do they care what happened to the General’s men?  Why do they care who was on that hill?  If that hill was so important, why weren’t there guards or a roadblock?
5. The General’s daughter refuses to leave with Statham and Stalone as they take off in a plane.  Why?  She isn’t the head of any group or underground organization.  She doesn’t have any superiors, followers, or plan.  She’s not some kind of rebel.  She doesn’t like what’s happening on the island, isn’t doing anything about it, and doesn’t want to leave.  Why???
6. Dolph Lundgren is a former member of Stalone and Statham’s crew who mysteriously shows up on this island to talk to Roberts and turn on his former friends.  How does he know about this island?  Once there, he apparently tells them everything about their plan.  How does he know anything about their plan?  What the hell was their plan anyhow?  He didn’t want to do the job, she has no plan,  no apparent cause (other than to sketch Asian women?), she just doesn’t like her father’s associates and she doesn’t want to leave.  I’m not sure what’s changed since he sat down to talk to Mickey Rouke, but Stalone decides he’s going back.  Everyone who saw the General’s daughter with Stalone or Statham are dead, so why would she be in any more trouble than she was the day before they showed up?  Once they get back to the states, Stalone decides he wants to go back to the girl who didn’t have a cause and didn’t want to leave.  There’s no way he could know and no reason to think she’s in any trouble, so why is he going back to help her if she has no idea what she wants and probably still won’t leave?
7. Oh, Roberts says he’ll pay Lundgren, who is apparently a junkie of some sort, $50,000 for his cooperation.  Lundgren says the deal was $100,000 up front.  They point guns at each other and then the whole matter is dropped.  Why would Roberts, a drug lord, start trying to negotiate with a junkie who walked into the room with a loaded shotgun he refused to give up?  Wouldn’t it have been easier to just promise him the money, get the information, and not give him the money?  Wouldn’t it have been easier to give him the money, get the information, and then kill him?  Hey, wait a second, this guy is a junkie!  Why not offer him some of your drugs!  Oh, and why in the world would you let an armed twitchy junkie into the room?  Stone Cold Steve Austin may be a bad ass, but he doesn’t come with a twitchy junkie force field.
8. This was a weird part of the movie.  Statham goes to the plane and starts its engines.  The General’s men see this plane that had probably just been sitting around for hours start its engines – and Statham shoots them?  Why did they care that this plane, whose sole purpose there on this tiny island exists to leave said island, suddenly started its engines?  Once they took an interest, why in the world did Statham shoot them?  Now, before Statham even arrives at the docks, Roberts and his one truck decide to rush to the docks – they’re not actually chasing Statham, Stalone, and the General’s daughter – they’re just going to the docks as fast as they can.  Once there, they have a LOT of men with guns.  They start to fire on the plane that has started its engines.  Why?  Statham just killed the only two people on the planet who apparently cared about this plane.  They didn’t make any phone or radio calls before dying.
9. For some reason Roberts thinks the General’s daughter is implicated in Statham and Stalone’s arrival, attack on the General’s men (who Roberts never liked or trusted anyhow), and attack on his own men after they started firing on Stalone and Statham’s plane.  He actually asks her, “Who were they after?”  Really?  Stalone and Statham didn’t show up to talk to the nuns.  They came for you, the bad guys.  You know you’re bad because you go around shooting people the General was in the middle of interrogating and you also fire on planes leaving your island for no reason.  You’re an ex-CIA agent who traffics in cocaine and you bully and insult the dictator of the entire island.  You threaten women with violence from Stone Cold Steve Austin.  They’re after YOU because you are the bad guys.  Oh, yeah, and you just hired Lundgren to assassinate the guys who just flew away from your island.  Wait a second, didn’t Lundgren also tell you their entire plan about twenty minutes ago?  Did he really leave out the part about who they were after???
10. Upon his return to the States, and after talking with a very remorseful Mickey Rourke, Stalone decides he’s going to go back to the island to … do something.  He insists doesn’t want the help of Jet Li, Statham, or any of his buddies.  So he calls them together to insist they not come with him?  Did he really think reverse psychology would work?  (I guess it did)  Are they that simple?  Is he?
11. Lundgren is watching Stalone as he and Jet Li leave their hang out (An auto body shop?  Do these guys not get paid very much?).  How does he know where they’re going or even that they’ve decided to go back to the island?  If he was going to kill them whether they were going back or not, wouldn’t it have been a good idea to kill them individually, rather than waiting for them to get together?  Perhaps at night?  In their homes?  Isn’t that a better idea than getting another truck full of armed guys and running Stalone and Li down on the freeway?  Wait, he’s ridden in their plane before – the same plane they flew to and from the island.  Wouldn’t it have been a better idea to just boobytrap the plane?
12. Once Roberts takes the General’s daughter into custody the General has some kind of change of heart about Roberts.  And yet, at no point does the General think it wise to disarm Roberts (who shoots him about twenty minutes later).  The General tells his daughter that she is the person he should have been.  However, all he does is offer Roberts (an armed man accompanied by Stone Cold Steve Austin, who is also armed) an open trunk full of money while asking him to leave.  Wouldn’t it have been better to disarm Roberts and Austin, THEN show them the trunk of money and a plane or boat?  Also, why did you have all of their money just sitting around?  Isn’t that a bad idea?  Presumably you needed that money for something in the first place?  Bribes, guns, drugs, something?  Was the General just a shrewd investor?  Why doesn’t he have a bank account?  If the General was such a terrible person to begin with and if he hated Roberts so much, why didn’t he just shoot Roberts and Austin???
13. After the General gives Roberts a trunk full of money and asks him to leave, and Roberts refuses, the General gives a speech to his men about how he’s going to fight off the Americans who have surrounded his base.  How did he know they were there?  Did he know what their plan was?  (What was their plan again?)  If he knew they were there, wouldn’t this have been a good time to demonstrate his change of heart, the one he had a two minutes ago, and declare to the American invaders that his daughter was now safely in his custody and that he had just told off Eric Roberts and Stone Cold Steve Austin?  Wouldn’t this have been a good idea, even if it were nothing more than a bluff?
14. A series of fights and explosions ensue until the movie ends with Stalone giving the General’s daughter money to help fix up the country.  If he had enough money to fix up a country, why was he working these crappy jobs?  If it wasn’t enough to fix up the country, why did he bother?  (In fact, Stalone said the job was so crappy no one else would take it.)  I am pretty sure Willis only offered them five million dollars for a super high risk job.  I guess that’s a lot of money split between six guys – but if all of the jobs they had taken over the years paid that well, why did they need this ridiculous job?

If it’s any consolation, this movie was a LOT better than “From Paris with Love”