On paper, The Expendables sounds like heaven. All the B-action stars we (mostly) love, directed by Sylvester Stallone in a non-stop action film sounds like the best time one could have at a theater. When the film kicks off Stallone seemed to have delivered what he promised and intended, but soon it’s apparent that’s not the case. There are hints in the opening that this isn’t the ultimate 80’s callback we were expecting, with CG blood, CG lasers, and the CG in general, but it was still promising. After the quick and impressive intro, it loses steam quickly.
This is a film with sequences that work in pieces but as a whole, it’s underwhelming. The whole film feels like it used the first draft script and there was never any tightening involved. Why would anyone care about Christmas’ (Jason Statham) love life? No idea, but it’s there and you have to deal with it similar to plenty of other scenes.
The story itself is rather simple. Barnet Ross (Sylvester Stallone) and his “conveniently useless until the end” team are hired to take out a corrupt general and a generic, slimy CIA agent gone rogue (Eric Roberts). The plot couldn’t be more simple, and yet it couldn’t have been more mishandled. The funniest thing about this team-oriented action movie: it’s hardly a team. Besides Statham and Stallone, everyone else is practically wasted until the finale. Even films like The A-Team and The Losers handle the team-centric dynamic better. What Terry Crews, Randy Couture, and Jet Li do for most of the running time is a mystery. And when you see them in action, that’s all there is.
The action is shockingly unsatisfying. Bad plotting is one thing, but when your action movie is lacking in the department it should excel in, you have a problem. Besides the opening and a few nice kills here and there, it’s shoddy. Plenty of sequences are plagued by distractingly out-of-place CG work. It not only takes away from the old school feel Stallone was obviously going for, but it takes you out of the film completely. The action in Rambo works because, despite the ridiculousness of it all, it was shot practically, cohesively and you didn’t want Rambo to die. That’s not the case here. By the end, who cares if Barnet and his team lives? It’s choppily edited action that involves no one you can invest or find interesting in the slightest.
Stallone sticks the camera in so close to the action you never get a sense of scope. There’s a car chase scene involving Stallone and Jet Li that couldn’t have been more frustrating. Stallone handles the hand-to-hand combat scenes nicely, but outside of that, it’s all very impeding. It’s even more saddening how wasted Li is. Li–who actually plays a character named Ying Yang–is pretty much played for comedic relief. All the jokes are the ones you expect i.e. about his height and accent. It couldn’t be more on-the-nose.
On-the-nose is the best way to describe The Expendables. It attempts everything you expect from a dumb, fun action movie, but even fails at making that standard formula work. Some scenes are fun and there’s some notable kills towards the end, but it’s still the worst kind of an action movie: a dull one.