Ex-combat veteran Tommy Wick (Steve Austin – The Expendables) is an enforcer for local Seattle mob boss. He is asked to courier a mysterious package to The German (Dolph Lundgren – The Expendables 2), however things don’t go to plan and soon he finds himself on the run from hit men, mercenaries, assassins and sadists. The bodies are piling up, and both men are getting increasingly angry.
The Package brings together two big action stars that are possibly past their best days, yet still manage to pump iron, fire guns and punch lots of people. But this is also a major part of the problem, they both seem very slow when the action actually kicks off. Lundgren especially seems to have the speed of a snail when it comes to kicking butt, yet his punches do seem to hit hard. His take on the sadistic mob boss is one of the few highlights, as he does give a terrifying performance especially when giving a cooking lesson to someone he is about to kill. However, Lundgren is vastly underused.
There is a lot of action here; it’s a constant gun/knife/fist-fight film that never really lets you catch your breath, which ultimately made us forget that it’s not the best of films. Seeing one of the bad guys shooting a Gatling gun at Austin is pretty hardcore, and rather fun.
The Package’s huge downfall is the lack any decent storyline; it has plot holes all over the place and stories that are never touched on after initially being mentioned. It has lots of clichéd action dialogue that has been done better many times before – it’s difficult to know if it’s a serious line or a sarcastic nod to the original source material. Also some of the secondary characters are just thrown into the story at select points to give a supposed added thread to the story, but they then disappear off-screen too frequently.
The best part of The Package is when Austin and Lundgren finally get to face off against each other. We never saw this in The Expendables even though it was set up to happen, and it does work rather well. Granted it’s not the most fluid of fight scenes, but they each pack a huge punch and we really did feel the pounding that they were dishing out.
The Package is typical of a straight to DVD action film starring these types of action heroes. The all out action is full on and rather good fun, yet it’s all completely let down by a non-existent plot that is blown wide apart by its own ideas. It’s nothing more than a mid-level action flick that won’t live long in the memory.
