The only life they’ve known is war. The only loyalty they have is to each other. This is the main theme behind Liongate’s latest action flick “The Expendables” that brings together a powerhouse cast of action superstars consisting of Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, Terry Crews, Eric Roberts, Charisma Carpenter, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. This film is directed by Sylvester Stallone (“Rambo”, “Rocky Balboa”, “Staying Alive”) and co-written by Stallone and David Callaham (“Tell Tale”, “Horsemen”, “Doom”).
Based on a story by David Callaham, “The Expendables” is about a group of mercenaries hired to take on what appears to be a routine assignment: a covert, CIA-funded operation to infiltrate a South American country and overthrow its ruthless dictator. Once the mission begins, the men realize things aren’t quite as they appear, finding themselves caught in a dangerous web of deceit and betrayal. With their mission thwarted and an innocent life in danger, the men struggle with an even tougher challenge one that threatens to destroy this band of brothers. With a runtime of about 100 minutes “The Expendables” unfortunately focuses more on over-the-top rapid fire gun violence, car chases, and gasoline enhanced explosions rather than natural charismatic acting/action talents of its stars. This ultimately results in becoming the greatest unredeemable injustice witnessed in this film against this once in a lifetime ensemble of stars.
The main problems with this film are the directing and editing choices to showcase choppy cuts between multi-camera footage to build intensity during its action segments rather than relying on longer shots as used during its dialogue scenes. After all, other than the obvious reason of getting people in theatre seats to see this film, what’s the purpose of pulling together physically capable on and off screen fighters such as Statham, Li, Lundgren, Couture, and Austin and not allowing them the opportunity to clearly show their skills? This is definitely not a good use of natural resources.
The other problem with this film is character development. Of course, in a film of this nature it is expected that you are supposed to shut off your brain and let the action fly. However, while watching this movie you are teased during several monologues with the somewhat complex back stories of each character (good guys and bad guys alike) and maybe a Robert Rodriguez style flashback wouldn’t have been too much to ask for.
Overall, “The Expendables” is a over hyped action flick that seems to be doing nothing more than showing you that at 64 years old Sylvester Stallone can still kick ass alongside his the younger co-stars. Oh yeah, and spoiler alert for anyone who cares, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis are only in the flick for about 5-10 minutes because they apparently could only find 3 hours on an early Saturday morning to shoot their 1 scene together. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a pretty funny scene (in a comic book kind of way) but don’t let the trailers and movie posters fool you, 5-10 minutes is all you get from the both of them.
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For More Information
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http://www.movieweb.com/movie/the-expendables
