The Expendables

The idea is simple: The principal actors play members of an elite mercenary squad known only as “The Expendables.”  In execution, however, this means they’re a team of aging action stars trying to recapture the limelight, only ending up parodies of themselves—leather-clad, botox-faced yahoos on motorcycles looking like every affluent mid-life crisis this side of Orange County.

The opening sequence holds promise for a ludicrous, action-filled movie with lots of explosions and bad one-liners, but it quickly degenerates into entire dialogues—terribly-scripted and unfunny—about regrets, old times, rants from 64-year old who needs to act his age but refuses.  It doesn’t work… but I’ll go ahead and summarize anyway.

Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) leads the crack team of gun- and knife-slingers in a hostage rescue off the coast of Somalia in the Gulf of Aden.  More or less, Mr. Stallone must have read any newspaper in the last two or three years, picked up on a pirate story and decided to run with it.  Okay.  So the team, which includes Jason Statham as Lee Christmas (ladies, no jokes please), Jet Li as the very wrongly named Asian stereotype Ying Yang, Dolph Lundgren as the equally-horrible Scandinavian druggie Gunnar Jensen, Randy Couture (who?) as the ridiculously-named Toll Road, and a train-wreck, I mean Mickey Rourke, as the appropriately-named Tool.  For the record, Jet Li was the only actor speaking intelligible English throughout.

One particular subplot that wastes a good portion of our viewing time is Christmas’ girlfriend Lacy (Charisma Carpenter), who complains, “When you’re here you’re not here.”  The film is rife with such pedestrian dialogue throughout.  This creates unnecessary tension (for lack of a better subplot).  Every man in a mercenary outfit must know what he’s in for, as it takes months, even years of training and preparation before they get such an assignment.  So, why do they all end up with noncommittal women?  Bad writing.  The artifice of tension leads to the film’s most egregious insult.  Every woman in the movie is set up as a victim to be beaten and bruised by one man so that another equally-insipid, violent brute can come rescue her.

The movie’s much-advertised highlight is a forced scene setting up the main plot, in which Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone meet just so a cameo of Arnold Schwarzenegger can be shoehorned in, aglow in diffuse light as he enters the church.  He comes, he exchanges boring, self-aware quips with Sylvester Stallone, we laugh tepidly, end scene.

Enter General Garza (David Zayas) and his daughter Sandra (Giselle Itié).  Garza, your stereotypical South American dictator, controls a vast drug empire which doesn’t seem to finance anything much other than a gigantic palace and the army of hired crazies to protect it.  Except the guards aren’t really all that effective because the palace gets blown to bits anyway, and the guards with it!  If Garza were smart, he’d have used some of that drug money to go places, take a trip.  At least that’s what Escobedo (Miguel Sandoval) in Get Shorty did with his free time.  Oh well, a drug lord and his money…  The rest of the plot isn’t really relevant.  Things will get blown up, Christmas will come back for his girl who will call on him only out of desperation, i.e. the lesser of two macho douchebags.  I’m bored with this already. What’s got my gears turning is… back in the city streets when the Expendables were being chased by armed men in large trucks, why did they waste the entire scene aiming at windows when they could have just shot out those gigantic tires?

Action flicks like Predator (1987) entertained us with a story, albeit a silly one, in which even the actors occasionally paused to marvel at the absurdity of it all.  But Mr. Stallone wants to be taken seriously in this boring film in which Eric Roberts plays a villain named James Munroe.  Really?  Did Mr. Stallone, oddly far more articulate in interviews than at any moment in this movie, find himself clicking through Wikipedia one day, researching our nation’s history, only to get as far as the fifth president before he had his “Eureka!” moment and called up his financiers?

The Expendables • Dolby® Digital surround sound in select theatres • Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 • Running Time: 103 minutes • MPAA Rating: R for strong action and bloody violence throughout, and for some language. • Distributed by Lionsgate

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