The Expendables
Directed by Sylvester Stallone
Starring Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Anyone who’s ever lifted a weight to get an acting job
Rated R for strong action and bloody violence throughout, and for some language
Boasting a cast that should cause sobs of joy in action fans everywhere, The Expendables is just as full of explodin’ and knuckle bumpin’ as one would expect. What was surprising is the amount of time spent talking in the first half of the movie. There’s apparently a plot, given that a majority of the first hour is devoted to setting it up, but the plot is so generic that I can’t, for the life of me, recall what it was, nor can I remember the names of more than three characters. According to IMDB.com, The Expendables is about a team of mercenaries that heads to South America to overthrow a dictator. That rings a bell. As one would expect, people don’t see this movie to follow a plot, and halfway through, the movie realized that too. For all the awkwardly delivered dialogue and story, it all goes away with a shrug after a not particularly stunning car chase.
That’s pretty much the case for the whole movie. It’s not particularly impressive, and it falls flat. I had no illusions that this would be a good film going in, but I at least expected it to be a more than competent action movie. Where are the killer one-liners? Where are the elaborately choreographed fight scenes? Sure there are explosions and gun fights, but they are so sloppily executed that they aren’t very exciting (A side note: the movie had a strange and disturbing amount of violence against women. It certainly wasn’t condoned by the characters, but it also didn’t serve much of a purpose other than to be an excuse for the Expendables to act violently. Take it for what it is, but it left a bad taste in my mouth.). There was only one scene that had me hooked and it was the film’s penultimate big chaotic fight, where these towering gods of action movies are set free to fight an endless barrage of faceless bad guys in a cramped hallway.
Sylvester Stallone seems to be grasping at his past, with Rocky Balboa and Rambo preceding The Expendables, and this time he’s brought his weekly bridge game with him. What could have been a great throwback turned out to be an awkward and clumsy attempt at reliving the past.
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Ryan Ebling has an as-yet meaningless degree in English and Communications. He currently works in a high school special education classroom.
She paints!!!!…That’s where it starts.