Stallone, Lundgren, Schwarzenegger, Willis, Rourke, Austin, Statham and Li with all these childhood heroes and vaunted contemporaries rolled into one, its like an all you can eat buffet of kick ass action. Ever since first seeing the trailers I have been so excited that Ive taken to wearing man-nappies to hide my excitable incontinence. The Expendables was always going to offer over-the-top action, awful dialogue and a barely recognisable storyline and in these respects Slys baby delivers.
The modicum of plot follows most of the aforementioned as highly-skilled mercenaries led by Barney Ross (Stallone) who take on a do-or-die mission to violently depose a corrupt South American Dictator (Zayas) backed by a rogue CIA agent (Roberts). That’s pretty much it.
Shock, horror, the acting is truly awful, not that the script gives this lot of apes anything to play with. All the lines seem to be ad-libbed by people that dont really know what to say; Youre rubbish, No… you are, I… guess I am Chuckle. And the prize for overacting goes to Dolph Lundgren who really needs to tone his crazy expressions down a notch or two. Far too much of the first half of the film is given up to trying to build some semblance of a plot and characterisation (normally a noble sentiment) but when it is written and acted this poorly it is a drawn-out and cringing watch that just delays the inevitable explosions.
When everything gets blown up, and I mean everything, there is an eventual gush of testosterone filled carnage that reminds you what you were so excited about in the first place. As you would expect the action is top notch and varied enough to keep it fresh and original and also, as there are so many big names to look out for, you don’t get bored of seeing just one man pummelling the whole of mankind to kingdom come. Overall, Sly has created a fun one-off watch in The Expendables and, let’s face it, it was never going to be a classic.