If I told you Jason Statham was in a movie, would you expect something thought provoking?
If I told you Jet Li was in a movie, would you expect something with a rich and multi-layered plot?
If I told you Dolf Lundgren was in a movie, would you expect to see an instrospective biopic?
If I told you "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and Randy "The Natural" Couture were in a movie together, would you expect to see a family comedy?
If I told you that Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis were all in the same movie, would you expect the acting to be top notch?
The answer to all these questions is "no". However, all of these actors appear in "The Expendables" and I am pretty sure that I could convince you that it is a recipe for an unapologetically mindless, cliche filled, action packed thrill ride!
This is in fact what we get. In terms of action movies, it is a throwback to the action movies of the 80s and 90s that made Stallone a star. Movies like Rambo, Cobra, Demolition Man and Judge Dredd defined the genre for Stallone fans. He seems to be in the twilight of his career and has taken to filming somewhat cheesy remakes with "Rocky Balboa" and "Rambo"in recent years...but if he can keep getting his botox and steroid riddled body to crank out movies like "The Expendables" then I guess I am willing to pay and see them.
"The Expendables" has a laundry list of things that could make it a terrible movie. It takes a long time to get things going (I leaned over and whispered "This is boring" at one point...it was that bad). They spend the first 30 minutes trying to set up the plot and establishing who the main characters are. Maybe it was a function of having all of these big name stars in one movie but I found this to be pretty repetitive as they jumped from actor to actor and each of them got their few minutes to outline why their character was "cool". Most of these scenes ended with a shot of Stallone's face emoting "That's Statham for you" or "That's Li for you". Most of the dialogue is pretty ridiculous and pretty much useless. Maybe this is to counterbalance the cliche ridiculousness of the dialogue when bullets start to fly...or maybe Stallone should stick to the acting and directing and leave the writing to someone else (after I wrote this I thought I should have written it "acting" but I don't want to harp on Stallone...He is what he is...I don't think he is going to re-invent himself at the age of 64). The other really glaring thing for me was some of the CG. There is one scene where they blow up a building and it looks like someone is standing in front of it with a cardboard cutout of flames...well it's not that bad but I have a hard time believing that in 2010, CG artists can't make things look exactly like they do in real life. All I can think of is that they got lazy at work and tried to finish stuff up before a long weekend.
So how much action is there in this movie? Let's put it this way...it's rated 18A and there is very little dialogue (i.e. little opportunity for swearing) and no nudity. So what makes this such an adult oriented film?...the blood and guts of course! In a day and age when we are so desensitized to violence, if you can make an entire theater squirm in their seats because of the gore they are seeing on screen then you know that you have nailed it (I think Benjy was giggling uncontrollably during most of these scenes...I have decided that he is simply an outlier of the general population...I think he would agree with that...I might have smirked a few times myself). I would like to see the budget for exploding fake blood packets and pyrotechnics...
So if you go into this movie expecting anything more that a mindless movie jammed with explosions and violence then you will be disappointed. However, if those are your humble expectations, then this movie definitely delivers. I give it 7 aging action stars out of 10...Coincidentally...Van Damme, Snipes and Seagal all turned down roles in this movie...could they have pushed it to 10 out of 10? Sadly we will never know.
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