Chicks With Guns Redux: “This Ain’t The Expendables XXX”

While a wild-eyed and committed Kimberly Kane holds the pornographically well-made but otherwise narratively flawed "Expendables XXX" together, this 3-D parody really does add a dimension missing from the original.

This Ain't The Expendables XXX

Studio: Hustler
Director: Axel Braun
Starring: Kimberly Kane, Brooklyn Lee, Andy San Dimas, Kylie Ireland, Tera Patrick, London Keyes, Ana Foxxx, Jessie Andrews, Billy Glide, Derrick Pierce, Alec Knight, Lyla Storm, Ryan Driller, Brendon Miller, Shaun Rivera, 2-Ply

Review by: Gram Ponante

Kane and her gang of misfit mercenaries (Brooklyn Lee, London Keyes, Andy San Dimas, and Ana Foxxx) negotiate work and love while liberating a Central American island.

We meet the team early on, including Kylie Ireland. The presence of Ireland and, later, Tera Patrick—both AVN Best New Starlet honorees in different decades—is a canny nod to the original film's use of cameos.

"If that knife had a cock," says Foxxx to Ireland in dialogue likely written by former AVN scribe Mark Logan, "you'd fuck it."

The movie's strengths include camerawork and lighting flattering to all the stars, which is the basic requirement of any porn movie. But then we get greedy. We expect that, since some of the sex makes sense, that all of it should.

Right-hand woman Brooklyn Lee might be handy with knives, for example, but she is tormented by jealousy. The first sex of the movie is a delightfully violent interlude between Lee and Billy Glide, which segues into a dialogue scene that really gets our hopes up.

Andy San Dimas brings pixie trick Jessie Andrews back to the clubhouse, and subjects her to the brutish razzing of a drunk Kane and Lee. Like the opening scene in which we meet the gang, this one is short and sweet and serves to make us appreciate both the actresses and Braun's direction.

Then ASD and Andrews proceed upstairs to a tender but robust lesbo dalliance.

At a meeting with potential employer Church (Derrick Pierce), Kane is interrupted by Trench (Tera Patrick), who serves the same function as Arnold Schwarzenegger did in the original—the canniest of useless cameos, but still a treat.

("Judging from your ass," sneers Patrick to Kane, "you've been fighting paperwork. And it won.")

But we are in a porn movie, and I was saddened that neither Ireland nor Patrick does anything remotely porny.

Then Kane seals the deal with Church, leading to some odd choices.

"If you fuck me - even a little - on this deal," Church says, "I will hunt you down and kill you."

"There is no way I would ever fuck you," Kane replies. "But there must be some other way we can close this deal."

Kane sinks to give Church a blowjob, but it's strange; it suddenly becomes a POV scene and we never see Derrick Pierce's face again. Is this a sage Axel Braun heeding the pleas of generations of porn viewers to not show the guy's face? Not likely, as we have already seen Billy Glide's and will see Alec Knight's later, in similar situations.

It just seems like Kane is blowing someone else.

I went to the Behind the Scenes featurette, in which venerable pornographer Marc Star interviews the cast (Tera Patrick's favorite action movie is "Man on Fire" while Kane's is "Under Siege"), but neither Pierce nor Kane blew (ahem) my conspiracy theory.

Then I contacted Kimberly Kane. I wanted to know if she had somehow quit having sex with anyone but her boyfriend on screen, but she refuted my suspicion.

"Camera angles would suggest you were blowing someone other than Derrick Pierce," I said.

"I did too," Kane said.

Back in the movie, the team flies to the island where Lyla Storm is being held captive by a couple of guards. They rape her, but she doesn't mind. This brings to 80 percent the movie's Interesting Sex Scenes.

Kane and crew liberate the island with some not-ungenerous special effects and green screen shots, and Kane and Storm share a poignant, if out of nowhere, moment after Kane wastes mastermind Munroe (played by occasional actress/long-time behind the scenes operative 2-Ply).

Safe at home, we are again frustrated that Kylie Ireland exits the movie without removing any clothing, but London Keyes and Foxxx enjoy a threesome that has nothing at all to do with the story but satisfies Porn's standard 5-sex-scene rule.

"The Expendables XXX" was so good in some areas that it was not unreasonable for me to expect it to be perfect all around. But I turned off the Sylvester Stallone version a quarter of the way through, and this one I watched all the way to London Keyes getting some expendable all over her neck and chest, so that's something.

Not only that, but it was way better than this.

· Hustler (Hustler.com)
· Buy "This Ain't The Expendables XXX" (tlavideo.com)