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139 of 147 people found the following review helpful.
Because HD didn't exist in the Eighties
By B. Tarbuck
Oh man was this a fun movie!
At one point I leaned over to one of my buddies and said, "Best. Movie. Ever." Really. Actually, it probably isn't the best movie ever. But it was a nice throwback to the good old days of 80's movies that I grew up watching with the cheesy Schwarzenegger one-liners and over the top violence where the good guy wins and the bad guy meets his maker in some ridiculous way.
There are some over the top visuals that make it worth seeing and hearing; the sound was pretty amazing. And by amazing, I mean loud. Explosions you can feel in your bowels and that's not just the beef and bean burrito from lunch talkin' either. Better than they could do in the Eighties.
They missed out on a rematch w/ Lundgren and Stallone. I kept waiting for Lundgren to say, "I will break you" to someone but it never happened. The Schwarzenegger cameo was cool, but he should have thrown someone out of a window or something. Not happening these days. Same w/ Willis; he really has no part in this and didn't seem too menacing to me which was also disappointing. However, the rest of the cast delivered cases of canned butt-whoopin' as if they were FedEx.
Here's a typical scene. Statham kicks the tar out of a bunch of knuckleheads: in front of his ex-girlfriend who is dating one of said knuckleheads who, predictably, smacks her around. Too bad for Knucklehead that her ex has more than a passing interest in her and happens to be in a bad mood when he learns of the abuse. Bam. Pow. Smack. Insert one-liner, get the girl back, ride off unharmed w/ hottie on the motorcycle. I think people actually cheered at the fight choreography. I mean, the whole movie is like this. It's brilliant.
There are some good comic bits but really, it is simply a throwback movie done with bigger, badder explosions and a lot of your favorite tough guys from the era when action actors were immensely rugged dudes. Muscles ruled, brains, not so much.
5 stars because I can't imagine that they could have recaptured the fun from the Eighties in a better way than they did here. Don't take it seriously and enjoy it for what it is.
58 of 72 people found the following review helpful.
Good dumb fun
By buru buru piggu
The Expendables is good old-fashioned dumb fun in the style of 80's invincible, one-man-army action movies-- you know the kind: impossible odds, endless streams of bullets, useless enemy soldiers who can't shoot the broad side of a barn, and tons of stuff blowing up, whether it needs to or not. If you're here, you came to see the action sequences and the ensemble cast of your favorite action film veterans, not for the spaghetti-thin plot. Once again, the good guys have to rescue the girl. The names are forgettable and the story of a corrupt South/Central-American dictator is pretty much just an excuse for the great fight sequences, absurd shootouts, car chase, and other ridiculously over-the-top stunts and shenanigans. In one scene, for example, the bad guys get strafed from above by the Expendables' seaplane by Lee Christmas (Jason Statham) sitting in a exposed nose turret, then doused with gasoline and the entire dock gets set ablaze with a flare gun, accompanied by a requisite explosion.
The cast includes some of today's hottest action stars (and some nearly forgotten ones of yesteryear), including Jason Statham (Crank, the Transporter), Jet Li, MMA fighter Randy Couture, WWF superstar Steve Austin, Mickey Rourke, as well as a cameo from Bruce Willis and Arnold. As a result of all this star power, character development suffers and most of the characters are not fleshed out. We get some back-story about knife-expert Christmas and retired Expendables tattooman Tool (Rourke), but most of the other characters get nothing to work with. I even had trouble remembering some of their names after the movie was over. There are also some very unfunny short jokes aimed at Jet Li's character, Yin Yang.
Former NFL player Terry Crews (Everybody Hates Chris: The Complete Series, White Chicks), one of my favorite character actors, is always a pleasure to watch. Here, he is the AA-12 automatic shotgun wielding terror. He brings a shot of energy and comic presence to the film, even if it's for a very short moment: "You know, the enemy will always be terrified of noise. Especially shotguns. With this big boy spittin' out 250 rounds a minute, you tell me who's tolerating that." Even with so few lines, he manages to bring a smile to my face. This is the exception, however. Most of the dialog in this film is corny, forced, and delivered with awkward timing and the finesse of a sledgehammer. Dolf Lundgren and Sly Stallone are as unintelligible as ever, if not more. They haven't aged a day, thanks to the miracle of plastic surgery. Some of their dialog, I really had to strain to understand what they were trying to say, not that what they say matters because it's all terribly unimportant. The scene where Willis, Arnold and Stallone meet in a church is brutally stiff. I've seen better delivery from my pizza man. It really was painful to watch the clumsy exchange. Stone Cold Steve Austen is stone cold dead in this film, being nothing more than a big goon who beats people up. He has zero stage presence.
This is mindless summer fun that's inconsequential and requires absolutely no expenditure of brain cells. I do take issue with the way many of the fight sequences are shot and edited, making it difficult to see the action. Jerky camera and fast cuts make it hard to follow what's going on, leaving me a bit disoriented. Other than that and the already mentioned lack of character depth, this movie was entertaining for what it is. It doesn't pretend it's something more than a guns-blazing summer action flick. As I often say for movies like this, leave your brain at the door and enjoy!
98 of 129 people found the following review helpful.
The Magnificent Seven of the modern male action movie
By Dave Cordes
When I was a kid, heroes were larger than life. They still are today only with just one exception albeit a pretty significant one... in those days, Men were Men. They weren't pretty but they exuded their God-given male born testosterone with every ounce of testicular sweat dripping on celluloid. For a boy growing up in the 80's they were the male role-models and father figures that inspired impressionable pre-adolescent boys into shaping their adult manhoods. Those were the days of yore.
The Expendables isn't a great film by any stretch of the imagination but it knows exactly what it is trying to be and doesn't pull any punches. It tries to be the The Magnificent Seven of the modern action movie but doesn't quite hit its mark. It's more like the Magnificent Four and a Half (Stallone, Statham, Lundgren, Austin, and Li). The rest of the ensemble more or less being, ahem... expendable. My friend and I once had a similar idea for a movie that would pit all of our favorite 80's action stars into one no-holds-barred-royal-rumble-of-epic-manliness which we appropriately called "Cajones" but that was back in the mid-90's when there was still a chance to see most of these larger-than-life-nut-swingers together onscreen in their prime. The fact that Stallone, now 64, can prove that he still has what it takes and show the younger generations how to make an action movie proper after two successful comebacks with his acclaimed Rocky Balboa and Rambo is a testament that there is still not only a demand but a primal need for REAL movie star icons like Stallone that are legends who defy their generation and age.
There is only one thing you need to know about the paint-by-numbers plot and that is this: These titans of manliness have all come here to chew bubble-gum and kick ass, and there is a whole lotta bubble-gum to go around. When the blood and guts start flying it makes Peckinpah look like Walt Disney. If that is the kind of movie you are expecting to see you won't be disappointed. Perhaps the biggest fault with The Expendables is that it never quite lives up to itself. Arnold Schwarzenegger's cameo feels like it was thrown in just for the sake of having the three biggest 80's action icons together at last onscreen for a Hard Rock Cafe Kodak moment. It just feels like 'The Guvinator' shows up to give his quick endorsement before going back to the office. Fortunately Sly has much better things to do these days than bankrupting the state of Culifornia. I was never particularly a fan of so-called "professional" wrestling for all of its phoniness so guys like Stone Cold Steve Austin never really appealed to me but I'll take him and UFC's Randy Couture any day over any so-called leading male action star in Hollywood today just on sheer testosterone levels alone. At least Mickey Rourke showed that not all of professional wrestling is fake with "The Wrestler" but "Iron Man 2" hardly qualifies him as a bona fide action-star, more like Harley Davidson without the Marlboro Man. One look at his fugly face and you can see that his days of "9 1/2 Weeks" with the ladies are long over. Jason Statham is apparently the most masculine male action star Hollywood currently has to offer up and that's not saying too much with a resume consisting of "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels ," "Crank" and "The Transporter" series but I guess baldness apparently qualifies him in the testosterone brigade along with Bruce Willis whose days of headlining as an action star were washed up with the last "Die Hard." The truly expendable were those 80's action icons who didn't quite make the cut like Chuck Norris who for whatever reason was unable to attend Sly's little shindig. As a kid I probably watched every action film that Chuck starred in like "The Octagon," "Good Guys Wear Black," "Lone Wolf McQuade" and "A Force of One." You can't think of the 80's without bringing up Chuck Norris, or the poseurs like Jean-Claude Van Damme or Steven Seagal, all of whom are conspicuously MIA. Apparently Van Dammage was offered a part but he thought the script should have catered to his ego as well as a bigger paycheck so Sly made his part "Expendable."
The Expendables is a fun salute to the 80's and a throwback to the days when action films weren't trying to be politically correct and were all about blowing stuff up, flexing their muscles, delivering the one-liners, kicking ass and looking cool. To that end, The Expendables is a blast, but not a slam dunk. It's worth a matinee out of pure sake of nostalgia or a rental. If The Expendables accomplishes one thing it should be this: To send a message to the studios that there is a hunger for masculine male action icons who are on the endangered species list and to ensure their survival in the 21st century which has been corrupted by forgettable momma's boys and blood sucking vampires of the Twilight generation.
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