The Expendables is a big budget action movie written and directed by Sylvester Stallone. The appeal of this movie is the fact that Stallone basically got every action movie star you can think of and put them all in one movie so that you recognize everyone and not in the way where you have to scratch your head and think; well that guy looks familiar, where did I see him before? You know right away where you’ve seen guys like Jet Li and Jason Statham before and it’s that knowledge of the cast that this movie cashed in on.
Anyways the plot of this action movie which as we all know for the most part isn’t the biggest part of action movies, is about a team of mercenaries comprised of Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Terry Crews, Randy Couture and Dolph Lundgren who take on a mission from Bruce Willis to go to South America assassinate a dictator and free the people there. The dictator played by David Zayas is working with two other bad guys played by Eric Roberts and Steve Austin. I would be more specific about these characters and refer to them by their names but I didn’t know them while watching the movie and you won’t either however you will recognize the actors so that is how I will refer to them. So as I was saying the team of mercenaries kick Lundgren out of the group because he is overly violent and they don’t trust that about him which causes him to join up with the bad guys in order to get revenge. Next thing you know a lot of shooting shouting and explosions happen which pretty much sums up the best parts of the movie.
The script isn’t very good, they try to get you involved with these characters by having scenes where Statham’s character wants to get back together and settle down with a girl which he shows by beating up her new boy-friend and telling her he loves her which ended up as a useless attempt to make his character more relatable. There is also a scene where Stallone is talking to his old pal played by Mickey Rourke about how he isn’t sure if he wants to keep killing people which while kind of lame because he has been killing people for years and only now is he starting to feel kind of bad about it was actually the best performance piece in the whole movie. The action is entertaining but nothing spectacular. I mean so many movies incorporate over the top action nowadays with special effects and fancy camera work where this one is a little more old school which I didn’t mind but their big moments are when someone gets shot or punch or something blows up, there isn’t anything that makes you go wow that was awesome with the exception of one of Terry Crews’ scenes.
The acting well it’s hard to say the movie is kind of bland with a lot of stars sprinkled on top so a lot of guys didn’t get much of a chance to act outside of fighting and being a badass which isn’t really acting at all. Stallone was obviously the best in the movie and gave a decent performance but it’s nothing compared to Rocky. Statham isn’t much of an actor to begin with sense all he really knows how to do is stare intimidatingly at the camera the whole time which makes him perfect for a big, mindless action movie like this one. Jet Li was ok but he didn’t get much of a role so he doesn’t compare to any of his movies. Rourke was pretty good in his scenes with Stallone but they were really small. Randy Couture, Steve Austin and David Zayas were just kind of there and so was Terry Crews until the end when he totally steals the show from everyone with his automatic Shotgun that just mows down everyone as he walks through the hallways. Giselle Itié who plays the woman that convinces Stallone to take the job and fight a small army did a good job as the damsel in distress. Eric Roberts is a good bad guy but he’s very two-dimensional like almost everyone in the movie, he was bad because it made him rich and that’s all there is to it. Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger make very brief cameos where they’re in a room with Stallone negotiating the terms of their mission which was cool to see but disappointing because it was so short and goes something like this; I’m Arnold Schwarzenegger I don’t want the job give it to Stallone and then Bruce Willis does.
Overall the movie is decent and if you’re a big action fan and don’t care about plot or acting you’ll probably really enjoy this film. However you shouldn’t walk in expecting it to be better than any other action movie because of the cast because honestly the only thing that would have changed if they hadn’t gotten such a star-studded cast aside from the substantially lower cost of production and loss in number of people who went to see it would be the moments when you look at the characters and think about how you know each of them and how cool it is that they are all together. The movie itself wouldn’t have suffered at all.
Score: 2/5
