Today or tonight, rather -- Somali pirates whose day-job commonly involves the violent pillaging of helpless seafarers sit around sipping from Dasani water bottles. The set mulls quietly with grips and runners. Craft service prepares a delicious chutney for the 3AM lamb chops. A wall is moved into position, creating the illusion of a vast cargo hold, in which a gunfight will later take place, unseen. In a white, air-conditioned tent on the faux deck of a would-be container ship, Sylvester Stallone confers with his stunt coordinator on how to best sweep out Dolph Lundgren's leg.
They try it
.Then they try it again
Then again.
"Don't fall back so much," Stallone yells up to Dolph, "Or else you won't be close enough to take the punch."
The Expendables, perhaps one of the most anticipated action films of 2010, serves as a worthwhile reminder that even the fastest, most aggressive, most hard-hitting action films aren't so much a kind of brutal poetry as a careful science every fight an exercise in patience, the most spontaneous explosion the result of near-insufferable planning. Even the concept itself, which seems like something of a simple no-brainer an homage to the 80's action hero is the product of considerable thought.
"Action heroes have gone through a change," Stallone tells us later. "After WWII, there was a sense that we had to find a new kind of man. The John Wayne, the post-war kind of guy. Strong, silent. Having been somewhat brutalized...Then we went into Dirty Harry, which became more of an urban situation
Then my generation came along, and they were action guys, but they weren't affiliated with anything
They were America's outcasts. Then you have the new action hero, which is subject to technology, to CGI. Now the pendulum has swung around, where you're rediscovering the very physical Alpha Male, but with all the baggage that goes with dealing with a PC world. These guys don't fit in this kind of world. They're the Expendables."
And like every set-up, every shot, every sequence, the execution was always subject to change.
"This started out as a dark comedy, as a satire," admits Stallone. "Then it became a really hard-R, then it went back. It wasn't until, literally, a week before filming that we just said, 'Okay, let's make it this kind of movie.' It has poignancy, but it's not preachy. It's a dark comedy, but it takes the stereotypes of guys like Jason Statham and shows that for as tough as he is, he has problems with women, or that the only thing I've acquired in my life is a truck. That I can't even relate to human beings anymore. They're very, very tough in their own world and extremely weak in the real world."
Stallone yells "Cut!" and Lundgren, whose stride could clear entire buildings, even city blocks, lumbers across the floor to a simple director's chair, the structure of which seems, at first glance, dangerously incapable of supporting his massive frame. He points up toward the stage, where Jet Li ducks quickly out of view, rehearsing some passage of fight choreography.
"There's a hostage situation and my team, we're trying to help free the hostages," explains Lundgren. "It turns into a big fire fight, a big battle. All over the ship. My character's crazy
He's worn out by combat fatigue. And he's the one who starts killing pirates. He's about to hang one guy, who is already unconscious, right over the gallows, and that's when Jet Li has enough of that and tries to save the guy."
Flash forward an hour. Lundgren, noose in-hand, placing the loop over the neck of some unfortunate, ill-paid extra.
Stallone, off-camera: "Gunnar! What are you doing?"
Lundgren, in character, tightening the noose: "Hanging a pirate! Old Viking tradition!"
Talking about his character, Gunnar Jensen, Lundgren laughs. "He's very over-the-top, very violent. But he does have a good heart. There's a love/hate relationship between me and Sly's character."
"My character is very simple," adds Li. "He's Vietnamese-American. He joined this crew. They treat each other just like brothers. I find myself like a supporting actor. My role is very straightforward. I always have dreams about the future. If I have money, I'll have a wife, a son. I'm always dreaming about this. Very simple."
Of the action, Lundgren adds, "People are going to feel like this is real fighting. It's very brutal, very basic. Not a lot of fancy stuff going on. The guys who do the stunts in this picture are very, very tough. I haven't worked on a big picture like this in awhile and you really feel the difference. Especially the car chases. You're driving and you're following a chase vehicle, but there are five or six other cars weaving past, and you're thinking, 'Oh, holy sh*t, this is a big movie!' You can feel the size of everything."
Later, after Lundgren's finished holding a massive knife to his throat, Li offers his agreement. "Each character has their special skills. I think that audiences around the world will like it because they can see different kinds of styles in one film."
And that's certainly true. As the evening quietly continues, the Expendables mill about the set, and we're able to get a sense of just how much variety the film will ultimately include from brawling, UFC-style combat, to sleek martial arts; from simple .45's to semi-automatic shotguns, to brass knuckles and steel-toed boots. Everybody has their weapon of choice, but everybody understands the dangers.
"You gotta respect the weapons," says Terry Crews. "I have one weapon, there's only seven of them made in the whole world. It's called an AA-12. And this thing is insane. You look at it and you think, one wrong move with this thing and somebody can get hurt
It's a semi-automatic shotgun. It fires non-stop. Each bullet arms itself with its own grenade! It's overkill! But when they blew this whole set up
I swear, that thing was bigger than anybody thought it was gonna be. The best quote a stunt coordinator told me was, 'Hey, this ain't movie fire. This is real fire.' That was the big moment. That was it."
Crews, whose arms are the size of small children or cartoon ham-hocks, is immediately likeable, his smile infectious and his enthusiasm overflowing, but most impressive is his appreciation for the film's story and character work, which almost every actor that evening lauds.
"With action, you've gotta make people care," says Crews. "You can have a bunch of explosions; you can have people fighting, but so what? And that's what Sly has done. He's a master of making people care and invest. My character in this movie is a guy named Hale Caesar, which is the best name of all time! Hale Caesar is a bit of jokester, he's a bit laid back, but he's also the guy who'll die for you. He's your best friend
I've been married for twenty years, five kids, the whole thing. I understand loyalty, and this guy's committed. He'll laugh with you and he'll fight with you
.All our names, our personalities, Sly's really done a good job of making it so that you can care about each one of them as they're blowing things up."
"What I try to do with these men who seem invulnerable is show that they have feet of clay," explains Stallone. "So the audience says, 'That's me!' You can still have that flaw, that human touch
Take Rocky. It's not about him boxing. It's about Adrian. It's about him finding love and making somebody's life better. You've got some tough men in this movie. Some bad-asses, trust me. We've got extras in this movie that could conquer countries
Yet this is a romantic film. It's about this one woman in Latin America that represents this kind of innocence and passion and willingness to die for a cause. If it's just about muscles and bullets, that's a pretty limited thing."
But for all the action, all the stunts, the one thing that the actors seem most concerned about is the comedy
which we're assured is plentiful throughout the film.
"A lot of these fellows are terrified of comedy," laughs Stallone. "Sometimes it'll take four or five hours, and once they go with it, they love it. But it's extremely intimidating for them."
"For me, I haven't done a lot of comedy," adds Lundgren. "The guy has this very weird sense of humor, so I have to approach that seriously. To be funny, I have to be focused."
But Crews, who's no stranger to comedy in films like The Longest Yard, offers the best advice. "The big thing about comedy is
You can't agree on what's funny. It's all subjective. The good thing about here an explosion is an explosion."
And that seems to be the consensus here
that The Expendables is just a good, ol' fashioned action flick.
"It's really difficult through the movies to talk about your beliefs," says Li. "The audience is so smart. 'Don't try to teach me!,' they say, and that's fine. This kind of movie is nothing but fun for people an action movie, a pop-corn movie."
And as for the mood, Randy Couture codenamed: Toll Road says it best: "The chemistry started when all the Expendables came together for the first scene. The whole set was electric because all of us were there at the same time. And the momentum has carried through until today."
The hope appears to be that it'll carry through until The Expendables 2, as almost everyone we spoke to offered up interest in a sequel, making us wonder just how expendable the Expendables really are.
"I'm hopeful and thankful that there's gonna be a sequel to this," says Crews. "I don't die! I'll give that away right now! We're not the Expendables, we're the Re-Negotiatables!"
