Blood, Guts, Testosterone, Terrible Lighting...

Rating: 5/10 (21 August 2012)

I'm not sure if Netflix's picture quality was just bad on my TV, or if the movie itself's lighting was just sorry. I think it might be both...
The Expendables has a serious lack of plot, which is dragged out by numerous escapades to foreign countries with beautiful scenery, (apparently a necessity for any action flick) and non-stop violence, which is supposed to make this just a good-time, man's man kind of movie. And it was when you could actually see what was going on. Sadly, more than half of the movie takes place at night, and so do the fight scenes. All you see in most of these are shaky camera angles, silhouetted fists flying, bullets randomly exploding in every direction, and crashes and grunts that are supposed to be relevant to the blacked- out action. There were a few scenes that were borderline awesome, and guess what? Those were the fight scenes that took place in the daytime, which includes a fast paced shootout, and a car chase featuring Jet Li.
All in all, this movie was not supposed to be an Oscar-winner, obviously, but it was supposed to be just a violent, good time. But the camera and lighting quality was so poor that you could rarely see the fight scenes that you most likely expected to enjoy.