The Expendables
They can all jog on. Except for Jason Statham. We love him.
Review
What do you get when you pay what was presumably an obscene sum of money for every action audience magnet in the Hollywood little black book? A film full of average, that's what. But hey, let's not pretend we were in the game for anything more than a feature-length chunk of entertainment with maybe a touch of big-budget bad-ass thrown in for good measure. And that's essentially what we got from The Expendables.
It will no doubt be not at all shocking that the film fell down mostly on its selection of poor and often unnecessary characters and ropey plot. In a nutshell the team of über built Expendables try to overthrow the ruthless dictator of somewhere-in-South-America. There's also a hot girl in it who needs rescuing. Her character allows for Mickey Rourke's appropriately named character Tool to have an entirely unlikely breakdown about lost love, although this isn't a good thing. But hey, she's fit. Wet t-shirt particularly appreciated.
Sly Stallone's acting was up to its usual standard (average) and his dialogue typically tricky to decipher since it was delivered in low-pitched oafish grunts. These were presumably directed as such so that the audience immediately thinks ”Wow! These guys are solid“. The only stand-out performance amidst an otherwise incidental cast list was Jason Statham. He is an absolute legend. We find it impossible to give any constructive analysis on him when he is this much of a beast.
A highlight of the film was Arnie's cameo, which was essentially a tongue-in-cheek slagging match between him and Sly Stallone with Bruce Willis laying down the lay at the end. A hugely original quip about Schwarzenegger's character wanting to be president got a big laugh from this audience, but certainly says something about the humour targets of the scriptwriters.
For its congregation of heroes and claims of the best action cast ever assembled, the film was simply not as good as any of Stallone's solo efforts (Rambo springs to mind). But despite all the negatives it dragged itself up to watchable after the slow first half to a reasonably epic finale; lots of explosions, shooting, you know the drill. And any film that features a massive automatic shotgun that turns people to slush and makes everything else explode is entertaining in our book.
www.theexpendablesmovie.netOliver Aplin
