The Expendables

The Expendables
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Steve Austen, Terry Crews and Mickey Rourke.
Genre: Action
Director: Sylvester Stallone
Rated: R

Stallone stars as Barney Ross the leader of a group of mercenaries/Bikers called the expendables who take on a high risk job overthrowing the dictator of a remote third world island and the ex CIA agent backing him.

The novelty of the expendables is the combination of having all of these action stars from this generation and the last in one movie together. That novelty would have been pulled off if the focus of the movie weren’t on Stallone; to really work this had to be a true ensemble picture. Instead everyone is just a supporting player to Stallone. Stallone looks great given his age, however any scene that requires him to run is painful to watch, he looks like an old dog with hip dysplasia plodding through mud. There are two slow motion scenes where Stallone feels the need to run with explosions behind him, and that is two more than were needed. Better time would have been spent fleshing out some semblance of a character for the rest of the cast.
The group of the mercenaries includes Jason Statham as “Lee Christmas” Jet Li as “Ying Yang”, Randy Couture as “Toll Road” Terry Crews as “Hale Caesar” and Dolph Lundren as “Gunner Jensen” (Yes all completely ridiculous names).

Upon acceptance of the mission Stallone and Statham head to the tiny island of Vilena to do some recon, They go through this trouble and come up with surprisingly little in terms of actual intel, for being professionals one would think that more info would be gathered than simply finding out that Sandra (Giselle Itie) loves her island and disapproves of her father General Garza (David Zayas). For some unknown reason Stallone cant get Sandra out of his mind and once Mickey Rourke (Tool) uses up his five minutes of screen time to show everyone how to act and utilize emotion. The deal is sealed to help Sandra out.

The opening sequence and the ending sequence are what people paid the price of admission for, a bunch of actions stars killing people and blowing things up. The middle of the film is a real snooze.

On the bright side there are a few times where Stallone does seem to recognize his age, not winning every fight and not forcing himself on the much younger female lead was refreshing. I actually laughed out loud at the end of his confrontation with former CIA agent James Munroe (Eric Roberts) when Stallone utters the mandatory one liner.

Li, Statham and Lundgren are given one solo fighting scene a piece while Crews and Couture are given minimal screen time till the end.

With such a strong Action movie cast if Stallone deferred to them more and less on himself the expendables could have risen above its own gimmick and become something more than the sum of its parts.

Grade -76