The Expendables (2010) * * *


Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, Terry Crews, Steve Austin, Randy Couture, Gary Daniels, Giselle Itie’, David Zayas, Charisma Carpenter, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis

Directed by Sylvester Stallone

A gang of bad-ass mercenaries (Stallone, Statham, Li, Lundgren, Crews, and Couture) go on a mission to destroy a small Latin army led by ex-CIA honcho (Roberts) who runs a drug biz meanwhile there is trouble in the ranks as the job is getting to expendable Dolph and when he is cut from the team, he looks for vengeance. All in all The Expendables is exactly what it promises, it features some good car chases and excellent shootouts, but the fight sequences are cut too fast and sometimes not as good as they could be, although the Lundgren/Li showdown is pretty fun. The biggest problem with The Expendables has too many characters, leaving it almost impossible to develop said characters (or the action sequences) when everybody has a big scene.  In other words the movie lacks focus.The plot as expected is extremely routine and has been done a hundred times, but this doesn’t matter so much as how well it is done and The Expendables is pretty good as far as these things go. The Expendables opened number 1 in theaters and it was nice to see that our action stars still have it and can come back as popular. Indeed one hopes we get more movies like this in theaters and if anything else let’s hope our action heroes take down the lame camera angles of Michael Bay and CGI crap. The Expendables then delivers what it promises and on a lot of levels that’s all you need. Dolph Lundgren’s character is probably the most fun thing about it and thankfully he is used well, Jet Li on the other hand comes off the most disappointing in terms of his use as he plays really lame comic relief intead of exploiting his martial artistry as it could,  but all in all the movie works for what it is and while it’s not The Wild Bunch, it is fun mindless entertainment.