Old action heroes never die, they take steroids, become governor of California, and end up in Simon West's The Expendables 2. Arnold Schwarzenegger is not the worst of the fogies in this tirade of gunfire, blood spurts, and phony machismo, but he might be the saddest, as he lamely repeats taglines from his other movies. Luckily, he has limited screen time, leaving the heavy lifting to human fence post Sylvester Stallone, who co-wrote the screenplay and plays the head of the titular squad of antique commandos. After a few scrapes involving body counts in the triple digits, they go on a payback mission against another bunch of mercenaries, but with Slavic accents, The best, or most dignified, relic might be Jean-Claude Van Damme, leader of the bad guys, whose face is as immobile as Stallone's but is frozen in an enigmatic smirk. As for Bruce Willis, he should know better, having starred in the comparatively brilliant over-the-hill action-hero comedy Red. But then he had Helen Mirren on his side.
