Mercenaries
Do you remember some Fairchild Republic A-10 Attack Aircraft or perhaps Lasers XIV by Cannon Group’s action films in the 80s? Of course, everybody knows about how Stallone, despite all him being in focus commercials in 2010 somehow still managed to reenact that era with The Expendables. Speaking of Expendables, how many of you also heard that there would be an “Expenda-belles” movie in the works as well? And even now with three films under the franchise’s belt, still there has been no mention of a female cast in any of the forthcoming movies? Forget about it. Forget about The Expendables. Look for the Mercenaries.
As for the plot, just like the movies of the arc, it’s rather plain. When the President’s daughter is abducted by a “Amazonian She-Bitch” (her words) while she is doing a tour in one of the foreign war zones, a special female assassin unit known as the She-Swindlers, all of whom are incarcerated in the United States, is created by the government in order to conduct an audacious rescue mission that necessitates infiltrating a women’s prison. To be completely forthright, I learned of the new Mercenaries just after watching the exciting Zoe Bell fight-flick Raze and upon watching and loving the film, it was always going to be a matter of excitement knowing it would star one of my favorite martial arts stars who is Cynthia Rothrock. For more than one reason, I was keen to see, what Mercenaries had in store. And a little nervous as well.
After all, this is another product of The Asylum, who at any rate have recently attached themselves to spam sequels to their biggest “hit” Sharknado and a studio that has a questionable history with mock busters. But to give The Asylum their due, I found their Animal Planet film, Blood Lake, both entertaining and their most recent Goddess movie was an enjoyable low-budget mock buster around the Hercules legend that was less a quick cash-in on the big-screen adaptation than a retelling of the myth. But Mercenaries? well, that was, eventually, something else.
Greatly so. For a start, not only is Mercenaries by far and away the best film The Asylum has crafted but it also surpasses the Expendables franchise. I am sure you are probably thinking that statement is exaggerated and in all honesty, it’s ridiculous. Well, it isn’t. Loving the first two segments of the say as The Expendables, the third one (which I was fortunate to watch in a recent preview) was a letdown. It was a formulaic film, the kind in which the names of the actors on the posters were more important than what was shot and like the kind of movies that marked Stallone’s career downgrades in the 90s rather than the great revival that the first film was, It’s therefore quite safe for me to state that Mercenaries beats The Expendables 3 on all fronts.
It does what many glossier Hollywood female-centric action movies couldn’t do (Tomb Raider I’m looking at you) as well as what The Expendables 3 did wrong, because it has the right cast. The right mix of women.
Most importantly, the right story in which to show them off. In order to portray stronger female leads you couldn’t ask for a better group of women in a Cannon-esque action flick. Zoe Bell and Kristanna Lokken kick mocha arse as usual (Lokken seems to be channeling a little of her T3 character here) and Nicole Bilderback who is the real surprise as a badass bomb expert, having only appeared in teen comedies and the like in the past have superb chemistry. Also, it’s obvious that Vivica Fox and Bridgette Nielson deliver great performances as the evil damsels of the movie (Nielsen really chews up the scenery in a role she was born for).
It’s just a shame Cynthia Rothrock doesn’t get more screen time but hey at least she gets to have a smackdown, drag-out fight with Fox early on! There was a time in the action genre where women were referred to as the ‘shameless’ heroes; the likes of Cynthia Rothrock, Michelle Yeoh, Kathy Long and Rachel McLish, all of whom tore up the screen in some of the best B-movie action flicks to have ever been produced (before or since).
Of course we’ve had female heroes since, but in my opinion nothing has really matched the heady days of the straight to video era of creating real star vehicles which can put women who can truly kick arse right in the limelight. That’s how mercenaries operate. And they do it quite well.
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