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Dancing_P [ 5.0 ]
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Like every red-blooded male (and I'm sure quite a few blue-blooded males as well as a bevy of females), the prospect of The Expendables was more than tantalizing. With every bit of information Stallone dropped, a picture of sheer action badassery formed in our collective minds and built up so much anticipation that the film was bound to disappoint. Well, guess what? The Expendables is simultaneously so much more and so much less than I expected, it sort of defies all explanation. It's a movie that advertises itself as stupid that manages to be both stupider than it looks and cleverly self-aware. It contains very little acting across the board from one of the most stacked casts in the entire action genre. It is, in other words, an anomaly through and through, a movie that cannot be unenjoyable yet does very little particularly well. In fact, laziness seems to be its all-encompassing quality; if Rambo and Rocky Balboa were labors of love for a bottomed-out Stallone, The Expendables is a labour of lust from a man back on top.
The plot, as I understand it, goes like this: Barney Ross (Stallone) is a highly-trained operative who takes a job from the mysterious Mr. Church (Bruce Willis) to rid a small South American island of the evil dictator (David Zayas) that is preventing the people Church works for from stealing all the gold or cocaine or whatever. Ross assembles a crew of his best men: knife-throwing Brit Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), kung-fu expert Ying Yang (Jet Li), artillery maestro Hale Caesar (Terry Crews) and... uh... cauliflower-eared neurotic Toll Road (Randy Couture). Together, they make pretty much everything on the island explode to try and lay the smackdown on rich industrialist asshole James Munroe (Eric Roberts).
If Rambo was relentlessly grimy, violent and spare in dialogue, The Expendables is a non-stop barrage of corny old-man jokes, mugging and double-fisted Uzi shootouts. Scripts have never been Stallone's strongest suit (despite that Oscar nom) but he's rarely written anything as corny and tossed-off as this, an overly convoluted story filled with useless scenes (particularly a subplot in which Statham's girl finds another dude, causing Statham to philosophize on the pain of rejection and also kick a bunch of dudes' asses), montages set to the finest in Dadrock (CCR and Skynyrd feature prominently) and jokes befitting a hunting trip by several middle-management types. Although the film celebrates a kind of piss-and-vinegar machismo and camaraderie, its target audience is clearly men of Stallone's age who yearn to hang out with the boys. Everyone is cast to their most famous emotion, save for a worryingly great performance by Mickey Rourke as the retired, chopper-riding bud that stays back. Rourke's always been a great actor but he's never been above slumming, yet he delivers by far the movie's best moment when he delivers an emotional monologue about his time spent in Bosnia. Still, nobody came here to see good actors tell stories - the film promises shit blowing up and delivers faraminous amounts of explosions, mugging, beheadings and generic plot developments. Within this relatively limited scope, The Expendables succeeds admirably. It's an accurate throwback to a time when action films were exactly this homoerotic and thinly-drawn but from the amount of braggadocio spouted by Stallone during production, I was expecting something that pushed the boundaries a bit. Stallone has been comfortable making exactly the movie expected of him, colouring well within the lines just in case anyone might see any digressions as poor form. Considering even his Rambo (which was, you'll recall, pretty much an hour and a half of non-stop carnage) was significantly more subversive and interesting, it's a step back.
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chapter11 [ 3.5 ]
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Unfortunately, despite the promise of "the Expendables" - it might as well be a chocolate-covered titty the way it's tailor-made to delight men of all stripes - the execution leaves a lot to be desired. I dunno, there's something so workaday about its action, so... so nothing about its story and script. It's like, clearly, Stallone figured that this thing would just coast on the strength of its premise and star power. Spoiler alert: it doesn't. Yes, movies need plots and scripts and, i dunno, some damn craft to them to really work. "The Expendables" is high on explosions, low on craft. It's "The A-Team" with f-bombs.
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Jeff_Wilder [ 4.5 ]
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The Expendables? An appropriate name for this Dirty Dozen knockoff. When I first saw this upon its original theatrical release I found myself praising it for its fun action elements but noting that Sylvester Stallone cannot write dialogue. Watching it again I find myself noticing the simple fact that I managed to ignore the first time: The Expendables is primarily garbage.
Is it fun to watch at times? Sure. Does it have any real substance? No not at all. In a way you get the sense that it's trying to be a throwback to the 80s action films starring Schwarzennger and Chuck Norris that inspired it. However, it doesn't have the trashy fun factor that made films like Commando and The Delta Force so fun. That is ultimately this movie's undoing. If you had asked me upon its release if I recommended this I would say yes. Now, 4 months later, I find myself observing that if you want to see a good recent exploitation flick, skip this and watch Machete instead.
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suminjoo [ 3.0 ]
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I regreted so much that I paid $5.99 for this movie on demand. This story was bad, unncessarily violent, and the acting was very mediocre. While I support/like old good-looking actors coming back with good movies (yes, I have a thing for old guys), Stallone is just not appealing on the big screen. Poor Jet Lee should stop doing these low-quality movies - it makes him look so bad...
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DokBrowne [ 2.0 ]
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Embarrassing. Stallone should not be involved in the writing or directing of any more '80s action revivalist flicks - as with the last "Rambo", he just ends up making a shitty, terribly written, dignity-raping movie that feels like it was made in the '80s, rather than a good one that comments on those shitty movies or gloriously celebrates their excesses. He thinks he's doing the latter but he's not clever enough to imagine how. He can't get the casting right (half of the all-star cast aren't stars at all, let alone action stars, and weren't around in the Stallone/Schwarzenegger era).
So the value of this movie is as an anachronism - in 2010, a big-budget action flop that comes directly from 1988. Yay.
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| Weighted Rating | : 5.1 |
| No. Ratings | : 6 | |
| No. Reviews | : 5 | |
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