The Expendables

When I first saw the mouth-wateringly good trailer for this movie, it brought back waves of nostalgia for a simpler time where action movies could have a very simple story, no fancy CG special effects and awful dialogue and still manage to capture the hearts and minds of movie goers worldwide. All the ingredients were there on paper – über cast of action stars, big explosions, a South American jungle and some druglords to fight. However to me it didn’t quite hit home as I expected.

I am a big fan of the golden age of action films, having grown up on movies such as Universal Soldier, Commando and Cobra. I can re-watch many of Van Damme and Swarznegger classics and have a very good time. However it seems to me that the many faults we were willing to let slide are all the more obvious in the current movie environment, where perhaps expectations are slightly higher for movies in general, and action flicks in particular.

Stallone is credited as a writer, director, producer and actor, and unless you’re amazingly talented this is rarely a good thing. It creates an environment where he is given free rein to do whatever he wants, and not many people could tell him that some (or in this case most) of his ideas suck. The story is very disjointed and laboured and it’s tough to see any real motivation for anything that is going on in the movie. Stallone is the head of a team of mercenaries called (you guessed it) “The Expendables” and they get given an assignment by Bruce Willis to infiltrate some jungle and take down a rogue CIA agent who’s taken over the drug trade somewhere in South America. After they go visit the island for a quick recon mission, they realise that the task is harder than it seems. I won’t give much more away, but the story is very basic and struggles to provide more than just the glue to hold the action sequences together.

 The acting is average, and only some of the actions scenes are worth watching. The film’s bright spots involve two awesome cameos by Bruce Willis and the Governator himself, but the scene lasts about 2 minutes and I would have liked more from these two. All the action actors involved are pretty old, and Stallone and Lundgren especially look like they would rather cozy up at home with a cup of tea then run around a jungle. At one point I was wondering if, when booking their flights for the recon mission, they would enquire about a senior citizen discount. The “love interest” in the movie looks young enough to be Stallone’s grand-daughter which makes it somewhat creepy.

I think overall it was a forgettable experience. I have recently fell out of love with the action film genre, partly due to movies like The Transporter, Ong Bak and From Paris With Love, which, to me, indicate that the genre has really gone down the toilet. If you enjoyed the aforementioned movies, perhaps you would like this one, however I would recommend that most stay well away and rent a classic 80’s action flick instead.