‘Expendables 2’ Wins Over Critics, Jumps Out To Box Office Lead
The Expendables 2 is bursting with action stars and the kind of campy old-school action-movie charm lacking in many of today’s movies, and now this movie sequel appears to have something else — the top spot at the weekend box office.
The sequel starring Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, and a host of others raced out to a $10.5 million box office gross on Friday, Entertainment Weekly reported. That puts The Expandables 2 on pace to make about $27 million for the entire weekend.
Though that is a respectable total and puts the movie on pace to top The Bourne Legacy as the weekend’s top movie, it would mean that The Expandables 2 is down a bit from its predecessor. The 2010 movie The Expendables made $13.3 million on its opening day and finished its opening weekend with $34.3 million.
But money totals aside, The Expandables 2 is earning good marks from critics. Betsy Sharkey, a movie reviewer with the Los Angeles Times, said The Expandables 2 is a little better than the original. She liked that the movie didn’t take itself too seriously and “ratcheted up” the camp factor and increased action to please fans.
Neil Genzlinger, reviewer for the New York Times, had high praise for Chuck Norris:
“Norris arrives just as the blood baths and leaden dialogue are beginning to grow tedious, and his deadpan self-parody is pretty darn funny. More important, it gives you permission to laugh at the rest of this mindless movie, which is the only way to choke it down.”
Audiences looking for lots of action won’t be disappointed with The Expendables 2, wrote USA Today movie critic Claudia Puig. The film’s body count is “stupendously high,” she noted.
