I am normally a camel when I go to the movies. I don’t get up to pee for any reason. I nearly burst a kidney watching Dances With Wolves after a large soda. So to tell you how much I “enjoyed” the Expendables, I walked out to the bathroom the moment I had to go. No problem.
This movie is a disaster from beginning to end. I mean, Is it just me or does Sylvester Stallone look weird? I mean, he’s 62 years old still playing an action hero. He kind of looked like he had man tits when he had a shirt on. His head looked enormous for his close ups and his eyes very close together.
But where do I begin with this trainwreck? First off, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwartzenagger make very short, very pointless cameos that don’t really impact what little plot was in the movie. Those bad jokes they make in the trailer? Yeah, that’s it. They don’t even shoot anyone. Schwartzenagger looks weird too, now that I think about it.
The meandering plot goes something like this: The Expendables are a mercenary group hired by anyone with cash to do cool things like fight Somali pirates. After a mission where things go very well, but all the pirates die, the guys have a problem with Dolph because he was going to hang one of the pirates.
The thing is, the guys just got done shooting two dozen people, but now they have a problem with one of their team that wants to hang a guy. Shooting people is okay, but there’s something wrong with you if you want to hang a guy. But the real problem, revealed later, is that Dolph is a drug addict and they can’t trust him anymore on missions. Okay, so the hanging would’ve been okay if he had been sober?
But wait, it gets more retarded. The guys get hired to go to the country of Vilena and kill the dictator, but first Stallone and Statham must go there and scope the place out. Guess they never heard of Google Maps or Wikipedia or doing research. Anyway, they meet up with this hot chick, who happens to be the General’s daughter. Then, they have to escape when the soldiers, who are just endless in this tiny country, chase them.
Statham and Stallone get away on their plane, but for some reason they decide to come back, strafe them with bullets, dump gasoline on the dock where they are standing and torch the soldiers. It is complete and utter overkill and totally pointless, making the characters unsympathetic and explosions boring. Two crimes I cannot condone. Part of the problem is, what kind of country can stand up to America or it’s mercenaries anymore? Iraq was practically run by Blackwater. How hard can it be to invade a tiny South American dictatorship when you have shotguns that shoot in the hundreds of rounds? Remote control explosives? Planes with machine guns? Seems like an uneven fight. At least if these guys were fighting Nazis in Word War 2, it might’ve felt like a fight.
Does your brain hurt yet? Oh, well Dolph, of course, betrays them and tries to kill them. Stallone, for no reason given on screen, decides he loves this girl and has to go back even though they are not accepting the mission. Oh, and did I mention that Mickey Rourke plays the retired member of the team that runs a tattoo shop where you can drive your motorcycle right inside? Oh, and did I mention that Statham also saves his girlfriend from an abusive boyfriend rival? You’re just supposed to write ONE movie at a time Stallone. But I digress…
Jet Li, Statham and the others decide they’ll go back to Vilena with Stallone, because, well, mercenaries are always anxious to risk their lives for no money. They go in and literally spend ten minutes of screen time booby trapping the General’s palace. No lie. They are running around and setting bombs for ten minutes at least.
Explosion, explosion, explosion. Something happens. Eric Roberts as the suit they have to kill in the end. And like every Stallone movie, all political problems can be solved by literally piling bodies to the ceiling. No joke, at one point in the movie, they talk about the army only having about 600 guys. They probably kill that many in the movie.
A six year old watching this would say his intelligence was insulted. You know your movie is in trouble when the only guy really doing any acting above his talent level is Dolph Lungren (who is actually pretty good). Statham does his, “I kick five guys asses at once” thing. Mickey Rourke gets an “acting” scene. Terry Crews steals a scene with his shotgun.
But really, the whole movie, should be called “Movie Stars Collect an Easy Paycheck”. I mean, at least the Burt Reynolds Cannonball Run movies looked fun and were funny. Stallone, who co-wrote the script, couldn’t delivery a joke if someone wrote it on the back of a pizza box and delivered it for him.
These guys should be made to give every cent back and it should be put into a charity devoted to stopping production on movies just like this. Maybe a special team of guys devoted to actually doing something noble other than lining their own pockets. Am I talking about the characters or the stars? I don’t know anymore. All I know, is this movie almost made me wish I was watching Quantum of Solace again. (No, it wasn’t that bad, but bad.)
This is not a rental, this is not a watch, this isn’t even a finish the movie review. I give this move a 2 out of 10 keggers. Not even in the 80’s would this movie be considered passable.
