The recent release of Predators, the latest installment in a long-running sci-fi franchise, may have been what did it. Or it may have been The A-Team. Whatever it was, I’ve noticed this summer that I’ve become susceptible to slipping into a hazy reverie that is a combination of Old Man rant about changing times and a wide-eyed, enthusiastic embrace of new technologies.
The trick, partly, is that I’m young enough to navigate the installation of a wi-fi network; at home we beam Netflix to a few different TV sets, watch YouTube on our phones, keep in touch with video calls over Skype.
At the same time, my college papers were banged out on an IBM Selectric, and our graphic design lab was a box of X-acto blades. But the biggest difference in the media world between then and now is simply one of availability. Today we largely watch what we want, when we want, and where we want. When the first Predator film came out, I was 14, and had one friend who owned a VCR. Tracking down a store that had a copy was an adventure, and once we had it, we watched it as many times as we could—even today I can (with some regret) reel off extended quotes from the film—because we knew that we’d have to bring it back the next morning.
Now, I have no interest in returning to those days, but I’m touched to see some of the old icons return in The Expendables, a brazenly backward-looking action film that hopes to revive the reign of Rambo. Directed by Sylvester Stallone—Rambo himself!—and starring, with the director, a who’s who of aging action names, the film is a time capsule that would be right at home in the leg-warmer era.
Stallone is Barney Ross, a no-nonsense mercenary hired to overthrow a South American dictator. The team he assembles to undertake the mission includes men with cringe-worthy names like Toll Road (wrestling heavyweight Randy Couture), Tool (The Wrestler heavyweight Mickey Rourke) and Gunnar Jensen, a sniper—get it?—played by Stallone’s old Rocky IV foe Dolph Lundgren.
Will it be great cinema? No. Will stuff blow up while cigar-chomping men crack one-liners? Very likely.
Some might tell Stallone to act his age: the actor turned 64 last month, and most of his costars are into their fifties (Bruce Willis and a certain bodybuilding governor also make cameo appearances). But if it were anyone else, I wouldn’t bother to give The Expendables the time of day. The actor, to his credit, seems to understand his legacy, and in a New York Times interview, is looking to the future: “I would sure like to bring the genre back a little bit, so some young guys could pick up the banner.” Here’s to one last mission.
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Also this week: Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra are on a different kind of mission in On The Town, the Stanley Donen-directed musical from 1949. The pair play sailors on a 24-hour shore leave in the Big Apple, each on the lookout for a new “best girl.” The Comden-Green-Bernstein songs, including “New York, New York” and “That’s All There Is, Folks,” keep the action humming along. It screens Friday and Saturday night at Memorial Hall in Shelburne Falls; live music begins at 7 p.m. and the curtain goes up at 7:30.
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.
