I Didn't Know What Time It Was

If you've been spending time in movie theatres lately you might not be sure what decade it is.  Since the year began, we've had new action films from Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Last Stand), Sylvester Stallone (Bullet To The Head) and Bruce Willis (A Good Day To Die Hard) (not to mention Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher last December). But how is this mini-80s action revival doing?

Not too well.  The only one making real money is the Die Hard film, and that's due to the franchise.  Reviews have been--quite properly--savage.  This is by far the worst of the series, and while it'll show a profit, it's underperforming. (I should add that if Willis isn't quite the action star he once was, he's still big enough to carry a movie, and was never quite in the same position as Stallone or Schwarzenegger, who are both about a decade older.)

Then there's the Walter Hill-directed Bullet To The Head.  Though reasonably budgeted, the film is a flop. It's also terrible. It doesn't point to Stallone carrying too many more action films on his shoulders alone in the few years he has before he becomes a septuagenarian.

Schwarzenegger, of course, had a lengthy hiatus from the screen, being governor of California and all that.  But even before he took that job, his career seemed to be on the way down, with his last several films that didn't have "Terminator" in the title not doing well.  Anyway, he's back with The Last Stand, and even though they kept the budget down, it's flopped as much as the Stallone film.  Too bad, since I sort of liked it. It may not compare with the best of his earlier work, but it's at least as much fun as, say, Commando or Raw Deal, and what's wrong with that?

So I wouldn't expect too many more straightforward action films with 80s action stars in the lead--except for The Expendables, which is a chance to wallow in 80s nostalgia, and has become a franchise of its own.

PS After a lengthy hiatus of my own, I've resumed putting occasional links in the titles to my posts. (I stopped when I got a new blog template and couldn't figure out how to do it.) You can tell there's a link when three dots appear before the title.  Generally, the links have nothing to do with the body of the post but are related to the title.