Just like Terry Crews so enthusiastically promised in yesterday's preview of a preview, the full theatrical trailer for The Expendables 2 has made its ostentatious online debut. 

As you'd expect, the sequel to 2010's The Expendables looks like a quiet drama focused on subtle, telling interactions between complex, nuanced characters in a world not of their own making. 

For the second consecutive weekend, Think Like a Man ended up the number one movie in America, again surpassing all expectations and defying projections that had the film dropping down at least a spot or two, considering competition from four new releases.  But the ensemble relationship comedy stayed on top over a weekend notable principally for being a quiet one, commercially.

Synopsis: A second-rate cage fighter on the mixed martial arts circuit, Luke Wright lives a numbing life of routine beatings and chump change...until the day he blows a rigged fight. Wanting to make an example of him, the Russian Mafia murders his family and banishes him from his life forever, leaving Luke to wander the streets of New York destitute, haunted by guilt, and tormented by the knowledge that he will always be watched, and anyone he develops a relationship with will also be killed. But when he witnesses a frightened twelve-year-old Chinese girl, Mei, being pursued by the same gangsters who killed his wife, Luke impulsively jumps to action...and straight into the heart of a deadly high-stakes war. Mei, he discovers, is no ordinary girl, but an orphaned math prodigy forced to work for the Triads as a "counter." He discovers she holds in her memory a priceless numerical code that the Triads, the Russian mob and a corrupt faction of the NYPD will kill for. Realizing he's the only person Mei can trust, Luke tears a swath through the city's brutal underworld to save an innocent girl's life...and perhaps even redeem his own.

In his career as an actor, Jason Statham has quite frequently played unstoppable tough guys, and whether out of revenge, profit, or self-preservation, Staham characters have perpetrated violence against innumerable bad guys, good guys, and assorted anonymous henchmen.  In this Friday's Safe, written and directed by Boaz Yakin, Statham stars as a former NYPD cop and cage fighter who kicks ass in order to protect a helpless a young girl.

See, Catherine Chan plays a little girl who knows the numerical code to a safe containing an invaluable MacGuffin, meaning that Statham must safeguard her from corrupt cops, Triad gangsters, and the Russian mafia, all of whom would happily dispose of the child once they opened that safe.

The story of Safe had us thinking about the tried-and-true trope of serious cinematic tough guys whose primary goal is the protecting of otherwise helpless youths.  We're not talking about guys like Superman or Spider-Man, who rescue different kids on a daily basis.  Instead, this latest Rogue 10 lists, in no particular order, ten onscreen heroes who dedicate themselves to their youthful charges.

Jason Statham has driven excessively fast in many, many films, so it was not unreasonable to expect that he might do so in the next sequel or two in The Fast and the Furious franchise.  After Fast Five proved last year that this is the rare franchise that only gets bigger on its fourth sequel, Universal was guaranteed to move forward on the not really-titled Fast Six, with a Fast Seven in the pipeline.  Statham, an action movie fixture, has reportedly turned down a role in the next sequel.

Directing duo Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, otherwise known as Neveldine/Taylor, made a name for themselves in 2006 when they released the adrenaline-pumping, low-budget action movie Crank. The stylized action and punk rock tone of Crank, its follow up Crank: High Voltage and their more recent Gamer have earned Neveldine and Taylor a cult following. The two have also earned a reputation for their daredevil approach to filmmaking, often shooting the camera while on rollerblades or hanging from wires. Now Neveldine and Taylor return to the big screen with a reboot of the Ghost Rider franchise entitled Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, which opens in 3D and 2D theaters on Friday, February 17th.

Oscar winner Nicolas Cage (Leaving Las Vegas) reprises his role as Johnny Blaze in a much darker and grittier vision of the Marvel Comics antihero than its 2007 predecessor. This time Cage also plays the Ghost Rider character, whereas in the earlier film that character was played by stuntmen. The film focuses on Johnny Blaze, who is still struggling with his curse as the devil’s bounty hunter. Blaze is lying low in Eastern Europe when Moreau (Idris Elba), the leader of a group of rebel monks, approaches him and promises to help Johnny rid his curse if he, in return, helps protect a young boy (Fergus Riordan) from the devil (Ciaran Hinds). What follows is a high-octane, explosive, roller coaster ride of intense action.

I recently had a chance to sit down and chat with directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor about Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. The directors discuss their new film, the iconic Marvel antihero, Nic Cage’s brilliance, their brand, the proper way to use the “F word,” the film’s missing sex scene, utilizing the characters in the Marvel universe, making people puke, a secret sock puppets movie, an action-packed remake of Debbie Does Dallas, Crank 3 in 3D, and the real reason why they dropped out as the directors on Jonah Hex.

Standard Sequel Operating Procedure dictates that, though the filmmakers can mix up certain elements in order to keep things fresh, some other elements that audiences responded to must be kept firmly in place.  2010's The Expendables was a testosterone-fueled shakey-cam actionter with no shortage of foul language and arterial blood spurts, and as such bore an R-rating for, in the inimitable words of the MPAA, "strong action and bloody violence throughout, and for some language."  Turns out, The Expendables 2 won't repeat the rating of its predecessor, and will instead be rated a more tame PG-13.

Everybody loves a movie poster, and today we have three posters from three wildly different movies.  The differences between Friends With Kids, Safe, and We Need to Talk About Kevin are reflected in the divergent styles of their respective posters, all of which are included in this edition of the One Sheet Roundup.

On Wednesday, we saw the very first teaser trailer for The Expendables 2, an introspective arthouse drama focused on a group of professional men grappling with their own mortality.  Just in time for the weekend, Lionsgate has released a new teaser poster to go with that.  You may remember an alleged teaser poster making the rounds a few weeks back, with everyone in the cast holding a big gun, but Lionsgate immediately and officially disavowed all knowledge of that one, saying they didn't know where it cam from.  This, though, is the uncut dope, straight from the source.  Unlike the trailer, which was a procession of names and teeny tiny snippets of action, this poster focuses on one clean image and one even simpler message, one that has something to do with the number two.  Still trying to figure it out.

Did you know that The Expendables 2 is on the way next summer?  Did you know that Sylvester Stallone will again be joined by a cadre of muscular action stars wielding guns of various sizes and probably kicking, punching, and stabbing many, many nameless henchmen?  Since you might be unaware of these facts, Lionsgate has released the very first teaser trailer for The Expendables 2, which helpfully introduces all the dudes who will be shooting, kicking, punching, and stabbing.  That's pretty much all it does though, sidestepping plot and all that jibba jabba* to supply a single name and image for Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, septuagenarian Chuck Norris, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Liam Hemsworth, Jean Claude Van Damme, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.