Aug
16
“The Expendables” Review
Filed Under Movies
Sylvester Stallone’s latest exercise in turning people inside-out, “The Expendables,” is a movie I went into with very low expectations. Reviews had generally been mixed-negative, and I was concerned that the considerable talents of the film’s cast would be wasted. Was this simply a DTV cheapie released theatrically, or was this the genuine article, a return-to-form for the action heroes of yesteryear? I think it’s the latter.
The film is about the titular soldiers of fortune, led by Stallone’s character, whose name is so ridiculously inappropriate (Barney Ross?!), I will simply call him Stallone in this review. When recruited by Bruce Willis to kill bad people on some spit of land in the Gulf of Mexico (Arnold Schwarzenegger’s elite team of commandos is busy), Stallone and his sidekick, Jason Statham, pose as wildlife photographers (LOL) to gather intel on a rogue CIA agent (Eric Roberts), who’s backing a brutal military junta there. Stallone thinks maybe they’ve bitten off more than they can chew, and yet, he and Statham still manage to kill approximately 41 soldiers — all of whom have CGI blood coursing through their veins — while escaping from the island. I’d say they have a pretty good shot at conquering the entire Southern Hemisphere if they put their minds to it.
After a heart-to-heart with Mickey Rourke — and when Mickey Rourke is your mentor, your movie’s awesome — Stallone decides to go back to the island to save the super-hot general’s daughter that he was forced to leave behind. He’s initially reluctant to bring the other Expendables: aforementioned Statham, Jet Li, Terry Crews and Randy Couture, whose cauliflower ears make him look like a damn Smurf. But then he remembers the name of the team and decides, hey, it’s okay. Minus Dolph Lundgren, the loose cannon Expendable, they return to the island and proceed to waste some fools. The final third of the film is essentially one entire action sequence. Terry Crews has one spectacular moment to shine in a scene that’s reminiscent of they hallway fight in Chan Park-Wook’s “Oldboy,” but with an AA-12 automatic shotgun instead of a hammer.
Perhaps my only complaint about the film is that it isn’t more like a 1980s action film. Much of the cinematography is the standard, Paul Greengrass-wannabe shaky-cam bullshit that makes single combat hard to follow. The fight between Dolph Lundgren and Jet Li — two expert martial arts IRL — is shot in tight, dimly-lit close-ups, taking away the wow-factor of having a really tall dude and a really fast dude get in a scrap. I already mentioned the CGI grue; were the cannon fodder soldiers squibbed instead, the multitudinous bullet hits would literally have more impact. Now I did like how Charisma Carpenter is in the film to give Jason Statham an excuse to beat up a basketball team, but her character’s woefully dropped after that. Statham deserves someone to ride off into the sunset with; a love interest character’s function is to be the hero’s reward for character growth.
I’ve always loved dinosaurs, so seeing grumpy old men like Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis — albeit fleetingly — in a room together is as thrilling as watching “Jurassic Park.” Collectively, these action heroes have killed more people than cancer. The groundwork has been laid for an “Expendables” franchise, and I’d be more than happy to see these thunder lizards righting all the wrongs in the world while collecting Social Security in another sequel or two.
-Brad Lohan
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The absolute best part of this movie, which I haven’t seen and may never will, is how every character except Stallone’s has some crazy awesome name. Lee Christmas, Hale Caesar, Gunnar Jensen, Ying Yang, TOLL ROAD, for god’s sake. It’s like every actor included as a stipulation for appearing in the film that Stallone’s character can not have a cooler name than theirs.