GIVERÉ: The Expendables film review

The Expendables prove to be just that!

There has been an undercurrent of excitement building up, mostly among men of a certain age, anticipating the arrival of Sylvester Stallone’s new movie. The Expendables promised to be an unapologetic homage to 80s action beefcakes; low on plot, simple in concept and high in machismo.

It teams Sly with an ensemble of contemporary action heroes: Jet Li and Jason Statham, and cultish lunk-heads of past and present including Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Steve Austin and Randy Couture. The real prize though was the prospect of an on screen partnership to rival De Niro and Pacino in Heat as Stallone shared the screen for the first time with other action super-alumni and Plant Hollywooders Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Surely this should be the greatest action movie of all time?! I think not! It should have been the greatest action movie of all time but for the clusterfuck of improbability that has been left in its wake.

To briefly summarise, Stallone and his crew are a group of mercenaries sent to a tiny Island in the Gulf of Mexico to silence a rogue CIA agent (Eric Roberts) and his army of faceless uzi-fodder.

So what went wrong? Concept is simple and the cast is a fanboy’s wet dream. Script and direction! The film spends so much time finding new ways to mame, murder and humiliate that it loses its grip on reality even for the action genre. Couple this with sub-plots that, although comedic, are out of place or just full blown ridiculous and you have a film that just doesn't make sense.

There are entertaining moments and the scene between the big-three winks towards their personal relationship with each other. There is also a WWE/UFC faceoff between Austin and Couture which will appeal to the wrestling crowd. However, great moments don’t make a great movie if all the parts do not gel. Cohesion is unfortunately lacking and, despite being one of the stars, Jet Li is severely underused and undervalued. Stallone’s use of the camera is claustrophobic castrating the power of the big hand-to-hand battles, mainly involving Statham and the balletic Li.

All in all this could be a million times better, and while it does have some entertainment value you will leave the cinema angry that it wasn’t the greatest action movie ever. Stallone’s boast that they were “gonna smoke the A-Team” may prove to be regretful as modern cinema goers really do require their action heroes to be made of a different stuff, even in an homage flick.

- Giveré