The Expendables (2010)

Here's the greatest premise for a movie ever: stick every kick-ass action star in a single movie and have them kill things.

DONE.

As a fan of uber-ridiculous action flicks of the 80s and 90s, The Expendables served as the perfect escape from lame modern action abortions littered with CGI bullshit...or basically anything directed by Michael Bay. Leave it to Sly Stallone to assemble the greatest line-up of action stars in a single movie (sans the sequel). The Expendables would totally slice through The Avengers or The Justice League easier than Arnold throwing a pipe through some pussy wearing chain mail.

And the names of these guys? The character names in this movie make Shakespeare look like Katy Perry song lyrics:

Jason Statham = Lee Christmas
Jet Li = Yin Yang (racist)
Dolph Lundgren = Gunnar Jensen
Randy Couture = Toll Road (what?)
Terry Crews = Hale Caesar (clever...)
Steve Austin = Paine (they just gave up)

The plot of the movie is pointless and awesome. Sly falls for some chick who is trying to save her small island country from her corrupt dictator father and a rogue CIA agent. So he and the rest of the badass crew travel to the island, spend a half hour planting plastic explosives at the capital, get the chick's father killed, blow up most of the island, and murder half of the entire country's population.

You're welcome, bitch.

It's a good thing this movie kicks ass and features showdowns between Jet Li vs. Ivan Drago and Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. Rambo because there are certain parts that simply don't make any sense. There's the totally pointless love story between Jason Statham and Charisma Carpenter, who, although hot, does not get naked and serves no logical purpose in the film. There's the pointless story tangent of Jet Li complaining about needing more money. For what? Who knows...

But the BEST and LEAST LOGICAL part of the movie is the fact that Ivan Drago betrays the rest of the team, tries to murder Jet Li, and then gets shot in the heart by Rocky Balboa. Not only does Ivan Drago survive the bullet to the heart, but then Sly and the gang FORGIVE HIM at the end. Does it make sense? No. But who gives a shit? Five guys defeat an entire country so let's not think about this too hard.

Oh, and the biggest badass in the entire movie?

Terry Crews' automatic shotgun/grenade launcher.

Why It's Awesome: Do I even need to explain how hard I jizzed in my pants when Sly, Arnold, and Bruce Willis all crammed their steroid-riddled bodies onto a single screen? If an explanation is necessary, the answer is HARD! I jizzed hard.

Best Quote:

Church (talking to Arnold and Sly): You two aren't going to start sucking each other's dicks, are ya?

Taken (2008)

Liam Neeson bleeds semen.

There is no greater badass in the New Millennium than Liam Neeson. Want proof? This is the man who trained Batman AND Obi-Wan Kenobi, discovered Darth Vader, single-handedly murdered an entire pack of wolves, led the A-Team, killed the Titans, returned from the dead as a Jesus lion, and saved over a thousand Jews!

So why, in the holy hell, would anyone dare kidnap the man's daughter? Don't they know he has a particular set of skills that make him a nightmare for Albanians who turn spoiled rich brats into crack whores?

In this ultimate badass outing, Neeson plays Brian Mills, an ex-CIA badass whose annoying teenage daughter (who he had with The Phoenix from X-Men) gets TAKEN by a group of Albanian human traffickers ten minutes after she lands in Paris on a trip to follow U2 on their European tour (serves her right for liking U2). So Neeson has to travel to Paris and kill half the population of Albany (where I assume Albanians are from) in order to save his daughter and her precious hymen.

There are so many straight-up badass-like-a-boss scenes in this movie I don't even know where to begin!

The most badass of these features Neeson walking into the den of the kidnappers in the guise of a corrupt French police official (is there any other kind?). As he's walking through the house, he's looking at each Albanian he passes like "I'm gonna fight you, I'm gonna fight you, you're dead, gonna throw a knife into your chest..." and so forth and then he straight up murders everyone in the house.

Then the most like-a-boss scene involves Neeson going to this French dude's house for information. Instead of just asking politely like a normal man he invites himself over for dinner and shoots the dude's totally innocent wife and threatens to slaughter their children while they sleep unless Frenchie tells him what he wants to know. Now THAT'S a badass, my friends!

The next time someone borrows a pen from me and forgets to return it I'm hiring Liam Neeson to get it back...HARD!

Why It's Awesome:

There's a sequel coming out in October called Taken 2: Tooken where more Albanians show up and TAKE Neeson's wife and then they try to TAKE Neeson! What?! Didn't these people watch the first movie? Didn't they see what happened when someone took the thing that came out of his wife's vagina? Now someone is going to take the vagina?! Shit is gonna get FUCKED UP!

Best Quote:

Mills: I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.

Snatch (2000)

In honor of the release of The Expendables...WITH A VENGEANCE, this month is man month at Captain 69's retro movie reviews.

The first man movie is Snatch, a Tarrentino-esque British flick about underground boxing and a diamond heist but best known for Brad Pitt speaking gibberish.

You can tell this is a man movie because there's not a single chick in it. Not a single main character (and there are many) has a vagina...not one. There's no lame tacked on love story or some 90-lb. chick who kicks guys asses or any of that Hollywood bullshit. The only chicks in the movie are strippers and that's the way it should be. The other way you can tell this is a man movie is because it has Vinnie Jones in it.

Vinnie Jones = man movie

This flick has everything a guy wants in a movie: illegal boxing matches, Russian gangsters, fake Jews, incompetent black gangsters, some dude whose nickname is "The Head," unintelligible gypsies, dismemberment, some dude who only has four fingers, corpses being fed to pigs, slow motion fighting, Vinnie Jones delivering an elaborate monologue comparing three dudes to a dick and balls, arson, tons of profanity, a dude getting shot a dozen times and surviving, and a dog that shits a diamond.

My only complaint is that Jason Statham is a main character (whose name is Turkish...which is awesome) and he doesn't drive a single car onto a moving train or off a building onto a parking deck. C'mon! What the hell is the point of having Jason Statham in a movie if he's not going to take part in a barrage of "Nuking the Fridge" moments?

The plot unfolds similar to movies like Pulp Fiction where several stories are going on at once and intersect throughout until it all ends in a nice, neat package, but what most people remember about the flick is Pitt's portrayal of the pikey, Mickey. You can't understand a fucking word this guy says and he can knock your ass out with a single punch...now that's a character.

This movie dispenses helpful advice, too, like Beware any man who keeps a pig farm. That one has kept me out of a lot of trouble...

Why It's Awesome: Violence, profanity, and no chicks to muddle things up. That's a man movie...or a gay porno...but in this case, it's a man movie!

Best Quote:

Brick Top: Do you know what nemesis means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent, personified in this case by a 'orrible cunt...ME!