Come Back, Sylvester Stallone: All Is Forgiven

Note: I wrote this on August 19, 2010, but decided not to publish it at the time. After viewing George Lucas's American Graffiti last evening, I decided that he has partially redeemed himself in the few decades since Return of the Jedi in much the same way I anticipate for Sylvester Stallone. For this and other reasons, I share this, now.


Much has happened since 1976, when a struggling, unknown actor/writer bequeathed Rocky, one of the last afterglows of romanticism and Hollywood's mythic (and sometimes existent) Golden Age. (Frank Capra loved it.)

One event of detrimental but monumental importance in the ensuing thirty-four years was the rise of eMpTyV (the once-accurately named "Music Television"). Among its many unfortunate influences: the proliferation of jump cuts in visual media in a culture that was already tragically McLuhanesque.

The Expendables (Columbia), the latest from the quasi-auteur who wrote and starred in Rocky, is one of several of his films that should be known as "the objectionables." It is a one-hundred-and-three minute, overly (and overtly) violent music video. And that is just one of its many problems.

Another is the script (such as it is). Stallone is a quasi-auteur (at least this time) because he is not the principal writer. The writing credits proclaim: "Story by Dave Callaham--Screenplay by Dave Callaham and Sylvester Stallone." Perhaps that is to his credit, as this episodic gore-fest was not his idea or "plot" (if only it deserved such a compliment). He did select the material, however, and he was in charge. Rocky is a nuanced story, humane and uplifting (in the best sense of those terms). It is universal--the "action" (boxing) is in the background except for the very beginning and very end, and even then it is subordinate to a deeper theme. Rocky Balboa has an extraordinary soul to match his extraordinary physical prowess. While it does not have a plot, per se (at least in the first half or so), it does have a logical progression of events (even in the first half or so) that lead to an inexorable conclusion, driven by the character and his beliefs, goals, and values. (The standard Hollywood tags "plot-driven" and "character-driven" are yet another Endarkenment false dichotomy.) In The Expendables, Stallone's Barney Ross is more amoral, cynical mercenary than principled, valiant warrior, in it for the kicks, literal and figurative (to the extent that the screenplay reveals much between its unrelenting, mind-numbing decapitations, amputations, and explosions). This time, the "action" is what the film is "about," if it can be said to be about anything. (What story and characterization exist are perfunctory window dressing. There is a skeleton of a conflict, but it is lost and essentially indecipherable amidst the visual and auditory bedlam, and neither side is particularly sympathetic or unsympathetic.) Dialogue is offensively and painfully banal. In 1976, the lonely Rocky poignantly said to his girlfriend-- who was lamenting that her brother had thrown Thanksgiving dinner into the Philadelphia snow--"Yeah, to you it's Thanksgiving, but to me it's Thursday." Now, Stallone's idea of arresting dialogue involves one of the indistinguishable "good guys" (as mentioned above, none are essentially good), unexpectedly rescuing the others in a hail of expended blood, brains, and machine-gun fire, offering the cavalier jape: "You all better remember this at Christmas."

Rocky was directed by John G. Avildsen (Joe, The Karate Kid, et. al.), and he did an admirable job. He was not averse to stationary, lengthy shots, despite the fact that cinematographer James Crabe was using the then-new invention, the steadicam). Of course, Avildsen was already a middle-aged man from earlier, halcyon days. But is not Stallone as well? Did he learn anything from John G. Avildsen? He obviously did. The results were evident as recently as Rocky Balboa (2006), which Stallone directed (and which also has an exemplary screenplay, written entirely by Stallone). Unfortunately, he forgot or never learned that there is a limit to versatility. Stallone's direction in The Expendables is a series of jump cuts, disconcerting dutch angles, vertiginous tracking shots, rapid-fire pans and tilts, obsession with rack focus, and general frenzied, frenetic mayhem. The violence is so gratuitous and meaningless that its effect is analogous to that of the most gruesome slasher films. It consistently drives home the point that this film is all "style" (such as it is) and no substance, all action and no thought, but consistent is not always better. Stallone was born in 1946. He recently gave us Rocky Balboa. He co-wrote Over the Top with the late, unsung Hollywood romanticist Stirling Silliphant (In the Heat of the Night). And what happened to Poe, the oft-discussed biopic of the titular writer in which Stallone was to stay behind the camera, let others act, and leave the "action" behind (in favor of more elusive, satisfying, true action)? The sometimes satisfying (and beyond) writer/director/actor/producer, who preceded the eMpTyV/Sesame Street generation, is pandering to the worst aspects of its epistemology and culture. Again.

All of this might be acceptable if the results were entertaining and appropriate, with the right kind of characters, story, and restraint, and if the erstwhile auteur had been anyone else. Action (and horror) films have their place, and the best of them (Die Hard comes to mind) are not only entertaining and appropriate but enjoyable (and if they strain credulity, they do so far less than this film, which almost makes Ghostbusters--another much better and more appropriate film--seem like a paradigm of verisimilitude). But if Edmond Rostand spent the rest of his career after Cyrano de Bergerac writing cheap, cynical pulp stories--should he have been forgiven?

Well, yes. If he had reversed course and left the cynical, amoral, and anti-conceptual to other (usually lesser) writers. Mickey Spillane did just that. After starting his career with the romanticism and class of Mike Hammer, he is said to have degenerated into the sensationalistic and pornographic, value-free world of his next "hero," Tiger Mann. (I must add that I have yet to read the Tiger Mann novels--they are hard to find--but what little I know of them tends to support such a characterization.) By the end of his life, he was writing tight, suspenseful, clean (in the best sense of the term) novels, with and without Mike Hammer. (The fact that his conversion to Jehovah's Witnesses may have had something to do with this is irrelevant, here.)

Human beings have freewill. Human beings are capable of redemption. And Sylvester Stallone, who is in many ways a cinematic Mickey Spillane, can redeem himself, too. His recent career is very much indicative of a cinematic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. If he casts aside the Edward Hyde of Rambo and The Expendables and fully embraces the Henry Jekyll of Rocky, Over the Top, and Rocky Balboa (and Poe?), he will once again be a much-need beacon of human dignity and greatness in this Endarkenment.