The Expendables

Reviewed by Mike Kamrowski

I've been eagerly awaiting The Expendables for some time now and my initial reaction after watching it for the first time was: Holy SHIT was that entertaining. It wasn't necessarily good story-wise, or acting-wise, or camera-wise... well, keep reading and you'll see what I mean.

The film, which was directed and co-written by Sylvester Stallone (and CHRIST could you tell), had one of the most ridiculous supporting casts ever assembled for an action flick. I mean, how can you go wrong when Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Steven Austin, Terry Crews, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, David Zayas and Eric Roberts all join forces to make the end-all be-all action movie?

The story, which let's be honest here wasn't even necessary because all we want to see is ass-beating by the masters of the craft, followed Barney Ross (Stallone, and the names only get worse from here) and his group of mercenaries on various missions. Well, two missions, but we're to understand that they've been doing this type of shit for years. Joining Ross is his number-two man, Lee Christmas (Statham), who is better with a blade than Paul Hogan from Crocodile Dundee. Rounding off the group are Ying Yang (Li), Gunner Jensen (Lundgren), Toll Road (Couture) and Hale Caesar (Terry Crews).

After the teams first mission, where they kill a boatload of Somalian pirates and Lundgren goes ape-shit and ends up getting kicked off the team, Ross is approached by Mr. Church (Willis) and Trench (Schwarzenegger) about a job. Naturally Ross takes the job, it goes bad, shit blows up and gets all kinds of stabby, his love interest (Giselle Itie) gets kidnapped by the evil General Garza (Zayas) and he's torn between going back to save the girl, putting himself and crew in danger or losing what could potentially be the love of his life. In order to resolve this, as most matters these days tend to be resolved, he goes and talks to Mickey Rourke. After the heart-to-heart, Ross decides to go back and fight against Garza and his fellow evil-doers James Munroe (Roberts) and Munroe's henchman Paine (Austin). His crew comes along armed to the teeth, eEverything explodes, the bad guys die and the good guys fly out with not much more than a scratch.

Truthfully, The Expendables was not very good in most respects. The dialogue was terrible, due in part to Stallone and company's writing, but also because FUCK are these guys hard to understand. Jet Li, Lundgren and Stallone can barely be understood most of the time, and Zayas and Statham aren't much better. The story doesn't make much sense- we never find out what the bad guys are up to, just that they're bad. Stallone, as much as it pains me to say this, is getting old; the running-down-the-dock scene was hard to watch, but you have to remember: the guy is 64 and absolutely jacked in this movie, so he's not that old I guess. The camera work was pretty terrible in some parts and the cast, while amazing, was so big that I felt like there just wasn't enough camera-time to go around. It really drags in some parts and I often found myself thinking "wow, this movie needs more action." But when the action came, especially at the end, damn was it great.

The overall body count had to have been in the low thousands and I can't remember the last time I watched a flick where so many guys had their necks snapped or throats cut. The fight scenes were great, as were the explosions while everything had an "epic" feel to it. The weapons were different for most action movies and the ways enemies were killed sometimes had me laughing out loud. The showdown between Couture and Austin was epic, Li's martial arts were fantastic, and Stallone kicked some serious ass but the saving grace for the movie wasn't just the awesome fighting/shooting/explosion/car chase scenes- it was Terry Crews.

If you thought Crews was brilliant in the Old Spice commercials, you haven't seen anything yet. Every time he's on screen he's magic. Whether it's talking about his switch-blade or his AA-12 shotgun (shout out to Modern Warfare 2!), he is just great. There's a scene where Stallone and the boys are trapped at the end of a hall by the baddies with no way out. Cut to Crews with a monster of a machine gun, posted right behind the enemies. He absolutely decimates everything in sight and then pretty much single-handedly destroys most of the enemy base, blowing up guard towers and just about everything else along the way. The crowning moment, however, was when Stallone instructs him to THROW A MISSILE at a helicopter so he can shoot it- he does and everything explodes.

There was a bit of an open ending and I truly hope they make a sequel- except this time, maybe let Stallone do the fighting and someone else do the rest.


4 out of 5 ninja stars