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clydsterama
Reviews
The Expendables (2010)
Used Action guys get used up
It's not just that the story and acting are ludicrous, even the action is. Why does Jason Statham have to get into the front of that plane? Maybe it's a P-38 -- I don't know -- but it's ridiculous in this day and age. If Sylvester had done something with guys who rebuff hi-tech and go with their mitts it'd be acceptable. Now it's just silly.
And what about that fight with the basketballers, one of whom was bonking Charisma...? Is that the way you wanted the fight meted out to these thugs? They wait for one another to get beaten before another dives in at Statham. And the action in La Vinena (hahaha) or made-up -place-goes here, didn't start until we were 33 minutes in. It's incoherent until then.
This thing was a scrambled mess, unsavable in the cutting room. Too bad... I like all these guys when they're on their own and the material is good.
Trauma (2009)
"Doctor Please" -- this show is agony
Like everyone else I was looking forward to this quite a bit. I like Cliff Curtis (fantastic in "Training Day." And Anastasia Griffith was okay in "Damages.") Imagine, well, you don't have to, my disappointment when this drek appeared and unfurled in front of us. Appalling.
Good luck getting to the hospital if the characters from this misfiring 3-episode-and-out boatload of triteness have anything to say about it -- they're too busy screwing in the back of the ambulance or drinking on the job. What's meant to be hip, daring, and oh, so real is merely lame, familiar and fake.
Even down to the way the characters are handled visually this was doomed -- the introduction of Cliff Curtis with this loving hero dolly shot was a harbinger of doom. No way this character lives up to the way he's photographed. And guess what -- he knows his stuff and saves that guy's life -- and then gets knocked out of the sky. What a stunning turnaround. I haven't seen plot twists like that since "Sheep in the Big City," which is supremely better written, acted and thought out.
I'm not going to ramble on about this. The positive comments are clearly written by shills, friends of the producers who've been sought out to write pleasant things. Too bad the comments' writers aren't doing the teleplays. They're equally as inventive.