James Harden and the Clippers, great cast

It will age well, too

I’ve never seen an entry from the ‘Expendables’ catalog, though I’m assured the films are terrific.

I don’t have to be familiar with the movie to understand the entertainment value, where a lot goes a long way because the actors on set don’t know any other way. In each star’s mind, their trailer is the biggest. Nobody’s purchased a ticket for a Sly Stallone or Dolph Lundgren or Chuck Norris feature since 1991, but when you put ‘em all together? Platinum.

I have seen disaster movies, the 1970s version of the ‘Expendables,’ flickering silently on a muted TV over one of the five channels the rabbit ears picked up. Similar genesis, as no cinema fan from 1973 dropped ducats on singular Red Buttons or Lorne Greene or George Kennedy flicks, but cast ‘em together and this roiling hotel fire suddenly turns boffo.

(Aside: ‘Black Sunday’ doesn’t work because of this lack of billing depth. If you’d tossed Charlton Heston or Omar Sharif or Olivia de Havilland into that blimp alongside sullen Bruce Dern, we’d have an all-time classic. Nobody loves Bob Shaw more than me, baby, but he’s gotta be at best fifth on that bill behind Shelley Winters.)

The Clippers are not a disaster, even if Paul George and Kawhi Leonard were the two most disaster-prone pros in the business when the Clippers moved heaven and earth to secure the pair, banking upon co-dependence to fairly outweigh individual setbacks. Bad luck so far, surely, but no surprises, and no existential knockouts. The franchise lives.