The Expendables

Stallone and Statham

However, Stallone’s cast is not all it’s cracked up to be. Most notably, despite featuring prominently on the film poster, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger only have largely pointless cameos and neither throw so much as a punch. Furthermore, and perhaps even more telling, was the refusal of Jean-Claude Van Damme to take part in the film on the grounds that he felt that the story was practically nonexistent. This reveals perhaps the movie’s biggest problem - considering what he’s starred in, if Van Damme complains about an action movie’s screenplay being bad then it must be impressively so - and indeed it is.

It attempts to include every single negative cliché of the genre, whilst lacking any good one-liners and taking itself far too seriously. Added to which, the central plot of mercenaries liberating (/blowing up) a small island proves less involving than that of your average video game, which is essentially what the film begins to feel like. This is particularly noticeable when the hopelessly inaccurate enemies (/weapon fodder) go to the extremes of wearing uniformed face paint to become the perfect featureless torrent of targets.

The film also has numerous other problems, notably Stallone’s direction. He edits his sequences far too quickly, believing that an extraordinarily high body count is enough to make up for not being able to make sense of the carnage. This is particularly noticeable in a car chase that becomes nearly impossible to follow, although it has to be admitted that the sheer level of carnage displayed on screen cannot help but ingratiate itself upon the viewer and its end battle is impressive in terms of destruction if nothing else. This is the film’s one vague success and it is what makes it watchable and admittedly at times even a little enjoyable. Yet as soon as these scenes end the biggest problems start with the non-violent scenes being primarily made up of Jason Statham’s character complaining his girlfriend has left him and Jet Li arguing he needs a pay increase and supposedly humorous comments being made about his height. Indeed, the only character who ever caught my attention was Dolph Lundgren’s psychotic Gunner whose character as scripted makes little sense and is underused in this film.

Although enjoyable at odd moments, The Expendables feels more than a little disappointing, and considering its cast, you cannot help but think they could have created something far superior, rather than a simple excuse to kill extras. Stallone’s attempt to recreate his glory days shows only that he is far from the action star he used to be and that as a director has learnt little since the abomination that was Staying Alive.

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