‘The Expendables 2’

Grade: B

Sylvester Stallone leads an all-star action team into battle again.

What passes for a plot has Barney (Stallone) and his muscle-bound merry men forced into a suicide mission to stop a crazy mercenary, Jean Vilain (Jean-Claude Van Damme), from stealing truckloads of nuclear material. You really don’t need to know any more.

The film has one rule: Go astronomically big or go home. That’s why this explosive sequel is an overblown, testosterone-driven assault on the senses loaded with aging action stars who make up a senior citizen brigade. This is absurd filmmaking at its finest because the action often goes above and beyond the most violent military role-playing video games.

It’s not a spoof, but it gets dangerously close.