Cinema Blend‘s Josh Tyler has written the best defense of The Expendables so far. Wait…who has defended it? Anyone? The point is that Tyler’s writing is honest and the thinking is right out there — no posturing, no subterfuge, no clever-dick wordsmithing. I vaguely sympathize with what he’s saying — this is the age of Michael Cera, the little-girly man with the scrawny bod and the little fairy voice and deer-in the headlights expression, and woe to any culture that embraces such a pale expression of maleness — but The Expendables is still a stinky, third-rate embarassment.

“The Expendables is not a great movie,” Tyler admits, “[and] maybe it’s not even a good movie, but it’s a MAN MOVIE in all-capital letters. For fathers, The Expendables is a rare opportunity to share a little bit of the manly movie magic they shared with their dads, with their own sons.

“It’s violent and gory and utterly reprehensible — there’s no denying that. And it’s true that the story’s a mess and the characters are two-dimensional. Everything Cinema Blend‘s Katey Rich wrote in her negative review of the film is absolutely true. She’s dead on. Yet I’m not sure I’d want it made any other way. The Expendables should be like this. It must be this way. Cavemen are two-dimensional, black and white, on or off. From that dogged, admittedly dumb, often careless simplicity comes their power. So it is with The Expendables.”