The
Film: The Expendable (2010)

The Principals: Director: Sylvester Stallone.  Sylvester Stallone, Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Terry Crews, Eric Roberts, Steve Austin, Some MMA Guy, Your Baffling Nostalgia

The Premise: Get a bunch of hasbeens together on a poster and sell lots of tickets.

Is It Good: No. It’s not terrible, and it has a handful of moments, but mostly The Expendables is tedious and uninteresting. One of the biggest problems with the film is that Sylvester Stallone’s script is dismal, filled with boring characters spouting woefully witless lines. He also never figured out the point of having all of these B list actors in the movie; the characters are not delineated in any meaningful way, and in fact nobody but Sly and Statham get anything to really do. In the final assault on the bad guy’s palace the Expendables are more like The Interchangeables – anybody could do anybody else’s job. And there’s no chemistry – it’s impossible to watch the movie without realizing that Jet Li seems to actively despise everybody else on set.

And then there’s Sly’s weird belief that audiences will care about the love lives of these grimy muscleheads. It’s stultifying to listen to Sly and Statham talk about their heartbreaks, and the only reason why a lengthy and moronic speech by Mickey Rourke is palatable is because the actor is so batshit that he makes it interesting.

Is It Worth A Look: No. The action is mostly poor, and the actors that you would be interested in seeing are sidelined almost the entire film. The Expendables was shot for a PG-13 and hastily bloodied up, meaning that every now and again someone gets shot or stabbed so hard they become a toon and are disassembled via shoddy, cheap animation.

What’s shocking, though, is that the film really falls flat with the actors. The whole purpose of the movie is to get these guys together, but there’s just about zero chemistry from any of them. Most of the actors display all of the charisma and screen presence of an oily rag. None are as bad as Randy Couture, an MMA ding dong who spends the whole film looking baffled and constipated. It’s hard to imagine anyone will deliver a flatter, less interesting performance in any motion picture this year. And yes, I’m including the shit your kids shoot in the back yard. Couture can’t even stand around convincingly. Also, his name sounds like a gay porn star.

Random Anecdotes: Sly falls in love with the least attractive leading lady I have seen in years. Everybody in this movie looks like they use engine grease as moisturizer. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a movie try to draw pathos from the fact that barely human Mickey Rourke can’t find happiness with a mostly silicone slut whose name he doesn’t know. Sylvester Stallone had his neck broken on the film, but that happened too late to explain why this script is so bad.

Cinematic Soulmates: Home movies of steroid-addled weightlifters, every Dolph Lundgren film that was not suitable for a discerning audience.

 


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