Metacritic reviews

The Expendables 2 offers the sendoff adrenaline junkies are seeking before the more sedate pace of fall releases.

This over-the-top sequel caters to the lowest common denominator in the best possible way, and it's so fully committed to brainless bombast that it muscles audiences to applaud by sheer force of will.

It plays out like a series wet-dream scenarios, performed by a cast of vintage action figures battered and broken from overuse, bleached and slightly molted from sitting in the sun too long.

This muscle-bound meathead extravaganza is a sometimes blissfully cretinous endeavor, delivering the maximum firepower and zero brainpower its target audience expects.

As a film that even passingly acknowledges the disposability of stars in a genre whose artistic merits are considered negligible (if they're considered at all), The Expendables 2 is indispensable entertainment.

Like the 2010 original, The Expendables 2 is all sound and fury signifying nothing, when at the very least it should add up to big, dumb fun.

A huge, bulging disappointment.

Has the parallel between the actor and the mercenary's trade ever been so overt?

It isn't a movie - it's more like the world's most expensive, elaborate viral video, making a detour to the big screen before being broken up into more easily consumable segments to be consumed on YouTube.

Chuck Norris is also in this movie, although you should know that he gets roughly five minutes of screen time, half of those devoted to his telling of a Chuck Norris joke. That is as funny as the movie's self-aware humor gets.