The Expendables (2010)

Directed by: Sylvester Stallone
Written by: Dave Callaham, Sylvester Stallone
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, David Zayas, Giselle Itié, Charisma Carpenter, Gary Daniels, Terry Crews, Mickey Rourke, Hank Amos, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis

America is a breeding ground for evil corporate billionaires. They spread out like the tendrils of fungi, infiltrating small governments of impoverished nations, subverting local dictators to their twisted and sinister wills. This is why guys like The Expendables exist; rugged mercenary killing machines out to be hired by the forces of good to exterminate the villains and their minions, once and for all. Or, something like that.

The Expendables, if you haven't heard, is an ensemble cast of familiar action heroes all bundled up into one film of action movie goodness. The hero mercenaries are hired by Bruce Willis - and let's just presume it was Bruce Willis doing the hiring and not some character he was playing - and sent down south to take out a bad old South American dictator. If you might have caught my drift, this dictator has been corrupted by "Evil Corporate America", and he also has a really hot daughter; two revelations which force The Expendables to take at least 82 minutes longer in their mission than they had originally planned.

The good part is - and this shouldn't surprise anyone - the action sequences of The Expendables are pretty entertaining. Bullets fly and stuff explodes. Really, any portion of The Expendables that includes guys shooting each other, or stabbing each other, or breaking any necks, legs, or elbows with interesting maneuvers, is pretty entertaining, with some scenes more entertaining than others. That one scene with that big fat plane strafing that pier and then dumping gasoline on it and then they shot that flare and then it went on fire and everything exploded including all the bad guys? That was neat! Also, very cool usage of a fully automatic shotgun; yes, I do want one for Christmas, thank you.

The same is mostly true for any of the other much smaller sequences in which the our action heroes drop one-liners on one another. There are some decent moments of bantering humor, with perhaps the best being those during Schwarzenegger's cameo.

But here's the rub; any scene that not featuring gross amounts of violence or that did not employ the use of cleverly delivered verbal riposte, sucked. This was a sizable chunk of the movie. There was some sort of strange thematic presence in the film about men pining for women that just screwed the whole thing up. Stallone definitely does some pining for the hot daughter of the dictator. The dictator, while maybe not exactly "pining", is forced to make some rather crucial alliance decisions due to his love for his daughter. There's two scenes in the film of Jason Statham having trouble with his girl - and these two scenes have nothing to do with the rest of the movie. Mickey Rourke gets dumped and feels sad, and Jet Li morosely mentions at one point that he "has no family".

What is the deal with all this emotionally flaccid nonsense? This should have been a high action film with tons of humor and only that. It should have contained a bunch of self-deprecating old man jokes. But it doesn't - I don't think there's a single geriatric crack in the entire film, even though it's obvious the bulk of them are pushing 60 or more. We're supposed to take this aging mercenary crew seriously, and we're supposed somehow become emotionally invested in their ideas of romantic love, personal loss, and family. This is the greatest sin of The Expendables - it should have been fun all the way through with no pause in the good times whatsoever, but instead it tries to inject this insipid, paperback emotionalism designed to tug out weepy little sentimental tears.

The worst scene in of this mess is with Mickey Rourke. In what is supposed to be a big tear jerker, he recalls a story of his mercenary days, of killing many, many people, and then seeing a woman on a bridge who was about to jump and commit suicide. He doesn't save her, and turns his back as she dies, and therefore, he opines, loses the last of his soul. This entire monologue is delivered with Mickey's face in a full screen closeup, gently crying, a drop of spit on his lip perilously close to becoming drool, as Stallone silently listens off screen. It's just trite nonsense - I wanted damned Barfly, only with guns, and not this guy who dresses like he enjoys the pizza at the Hollywood Rainbow on Friday nights crying about his fucking lost soul.

The most entertaining performance likely goes to Dolph Lundgren, who plays loose cannon Gunnar Jensen. The guy really has an affable charisma that makes him likable, even when he's betraying his friends and nearly getting them all killed. I wish he was in the film more than he was. Also enjoyable was Jet Li, who carries a dry sense of humor usually revolving around his diminutive size in comparison to the steroid factories he's partnered with.

I mentioned earlier that the action in the film was entertaining - it was. It's also not as entertaining as it could have been. The film often employs the now common "shaky cam" technique in order to try to convey chaos and energy. Shaky cam can work if done right, only here it wasn't. With everything shaking and the editing working overtime, it was often difficult to tell what in the world was going on.

The film's CGI is pretty questionable. There are multiple shots in the film with cartoon blood squirting with all the elegance of a photochopped animated GIF. It's worth wondering much of the 82 million dollar film budget was devoted to the paychecks of the star power. Given the cartoonish arterial sprays, they must have broken their bank and were forced to skimp on special effects.

I also mentioned earlier that the humor was funny - but not always. The first act is the best, but by the third act the jokes drag themselves into a smarmy territory so self-indulgent as to induce flatulence in anyone over the age of 30. The film ends on the worse possible note, with Jason Statham reciting an impromptu poem that was supposed to be cute but instead threatened to cause theatergoers' eyeballs to roll out of their heads, bounce on the floor, and rest in a warm pool of Mickey Rourke's drool and tears.

All in all The Expendables is one big missed opportunity. While the action and the humor do have their moments, they are absolutely eclipsed by a shaky plot, weepy undertones, and sometimes questionable special effects and editing. All of the big dollar talent of The Expendables would be best viewed on the small dollar screen - which is to say, cable.

This is a Day Two Review

Rating: (2 out of 5):