The Expendables. The movie that every man has prayed would happen for 20 years. And after 20 years, the Lord half delivered.
Now before I start the review, let me just say that I walked into this movie set on judging it based on what it was meant to be, an all out, guns awesome, testosterone action movie. That's what Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Randy Couture, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Bruce Willis, Steve Austin and Mickey Rourke are known for, and that's what I expected to have delivered for me in here. Imma tell you, and I don't care what you say, the action just didn't happen for me.
So The Expendables is about a group of mercenaries who get sent on a mission to some Mexican island to overthrow an evil dictator. And that's basically it.
I had a lot of problems with this movie. First one being that this was suppose to be a movie about an ensemble of the greatest action stars we have had in the last 20 years. I mean, who the hell wouldn't have been excited to see Rambo, John McClane, Crank, Wong Fei-Hung, Stone Cold, The Natural, He Man and Randy 'The Ram' Robbinson blow up a hell load of shit for 2 hours? That's what I paid to see. That's what I was looking forward to. But I never got it.
You see the movie poster at the top of the review? Stare at it for 5 minutes and you would have seen more of these guys than you would have in the entire movie. Let me clear up the confusion here, this isn't a movie about the Expendables. The movie centres around Stallone and Statham with the other guys briefly coming in and out every few seconds throughout the movie. If you've seen the trailer, you would have seen 3/4 of their appearances in the movie.
This is kinda like the same problem I had with Inglorious Basterds. I figured that the movie was going to be all about this group of Nazi killers but I didn't get the whole thing. I wanted more. The only time we see all the cast members together is only at the end, which is super fantastic, yes but who the hell wants to bear through 2 hours of nothingness to reach a 3 minute badass ending?
And the whole bit about the cast wouldn't have bothered me much if the action in this movie was actually good. It wasn't. Not by a long stretch. If you've seen Cobra, you've seen The Expendables. The action only lasts for 10 minutes at the beginning and then the movie turns into a whole big "rescue the damsel in distress" situation. I walk into the movie lusting for 2 hours of action, blood, explosion and gore and I got a max of 20 minutes of it. The beginning and ending of the movie has some really great action but there is a whole chunk of middle that was really really boring. Because they tried to squeeze some character development and a story in it, which was what this movie wasn't suppose to be about.
I don't know what Stallone was thinking when he directed this but who in the world would think that anyone of the cast members could carry a 2 hour movie based on their acting alone. I think they had more scenes with them talking and having character stories than scenes of them holding guns. And we all know how admirable their none-gun holding acting abilities are. This is an action movie! We don't care about plots or characters! We just wanna see things blow up!
But I will give Mickey Rourke a star for a part in the movie that he had which is probably the most interesting segment of The Expendables and it's only him delivering a monologue about the things he went through in Bosnia. That little 5 minutes held my attention in more effectively than any of the action scenes they had.
And I gotta say, for an action movie, the action scenes though impressive, weren't anything I will remember. There is such a total lack of imagination not to mention realism in these set pieces. G.I Joe was more fucking realistic than this movie. There is a scene in this movie, where Randy Couture gets shot to pieces and two seconds later he's running around the place like nothing happened. I mean.. c'mon Stallone! You of all people should know that only Chuck Norris can do something like that and not have the audience go, "Well that's dumb."
And Jet Li!! OMG Jet Li!! He is fucking Wong Fei-Hung and he does the wimpiest shit martial arts ever. All his appearances in this movie either as him saying lame jokes or being beaten the shit out of by some white guy. Every scene he's in ends with him almost getting killed until one of the Expendables saves him. WTF! Your fucking Jet Li! You ain't gotta take this shit from nobody. Go fucking kung fu ape shit on them motherfuckers!
I gotta say. With all the calibre this movie had, Expendables really really underperformed to my expectations. And I know what ya'll gonna say, "Oh you just like boring movies with stories and plots and characters, you don't know how to have fun." Then tell me which part of this movie was fun. Really. Please tell me.
RATING: 3/10
