Long live the '80s!

Rating: 7/10 (19 September 2010)

It is a well known fact that some big summer movies base their commercial appeal on whoever is playing the leading role. often emphasizing the star rather than the story. This is particularly true with The Expendables, an action movie where the plot is almost secondary to the cast list: Sylvester Stallone (who also co-wrote and directed the film), Jason Statham, Jet Li, Mickey Rourke, Dolph Lundgren, Bruce Willis, even Arnold Schwarzenegger (distracted from his Governor duties for a few hours to make a cameo appearance).
However, every movie needs a narrative to propel the action, so here's what The Expendables is all about: Barney Ross (Stallone) is the leader of the eponymous mercenary team, which comprises Li, Statham, Lundgren and Terry Crews, among others (Rourke is also involved, though in a more indirect way). Each team member has a specific skill, best employed in a series of dangerous, clandestine missions. One of them involves assassinating a South American dictator (David Zayas of Dexter fame) and his US ally (a rogue CIA operative played by Eric Roberts), who run a fictitious island with predictably cruel methods.
This being a by-numbers action flick, albeit more violent than, say, The A-Team (however, the bloodletting is more amusing than shocking, thanks to Stallone's Tarantino-like approach), a ridiculously simple premise was to be expected. The downside is that Sly has clearly spent more time on casting than on structuring the film, meaning that individual scenes, deliberately written to suit the actors (and some roles were recast two or three times, requiring an equal number of rewrites), are the very definition of fun, whereas the movie as a whole suffers whenever the plot has to progress. Additionally, not everyone receives the same treatment: Crews and Andy Couture, for example, are stranded with quite irrelevant characters, perhaps due to their background not being related to acting, while the female players (Charisma Carpenter being one) are just wallpaper.
That said, when Stallone gets it right, The Expendables really soars above expectations, as his cast of '80s "washouts" (and new action poster-boy Statham) pay tribute to the genre's most glorious decade with genuine relish. In fact, the film's best moments are the ones where the stars make fun of themselves: whether it's Li and Lundgren arguing over who would win in a fistfight, Stallone and Statham debating the merits of old versus new or the former Rambo teaming up with Willis and Schwarzenegger (who makes his entrance à la Terminator) for the most geek-friendly scene of the year, everyone knows they're not supposed to take any of it seriously, and that makes for a better film.
Overall, The Expendables is something of a mixed bag: not really the sum of its parts, but entertaining enough to justify a sequel which, according to early reports and fan-boy wishes, will try to make room for Jean-Claude van Damme and Chuck Norris. Now, how's that for hype?