"The Expendables" - Not so "Expendable"

Rating: 8/10 (25 November 2010)

Sylvester Stallone, star/co-writer/director of the 2010 all-star action romp "The Expendables," is living proof that some guys do get better with age. Stallone, who is pushing 65, is still in remarkably well-kept shape in "The Expendables," in which he is the leader of a gang of mercenaries hired by mysterious government forces - a guy named "Church" (Bruce Willis) - to overthrow General Garza (David Zayas), a South American dictator who is actually a puppet for a rogue CIA agent named James Munroe (Eric Roberts). That's pretty much all there is to the plot and is really all that we need to know as audience members.
Stallone is Barney Ross, their fearless leader; aging action stars from the '80s and more current action heroes are his comrades. They all have ridiculous names (or aliases? I'm not sure) like Ross's right-hand man and second-in-command Lee Christmas (Jason Statham, who by far turns in the film's most enthusiastic performance); Yin Yang (Jet Li); Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundgren); Toll Road (Randy Couture); and Hale Caesar (Terry Crews). Helping them out from the sidelines, is Tool (Mickey Rourke).
These guys are all aging old dogs and they know it, but that doesn't mean you should count them out because many of them are all either pushing 50 (Statham, Li, Couture, Crews), or 60 (Stallone, Lundgren, Rourke); they know how to get the job done and have a ball doing it. What we get in "The Expendables," is machismo, explosions, old-dog camaraderie, and more machismo. And the film's two lone females, Lee's main squeeze Lacy (Charisma Carpenter) and a South American peasant girl named Sandra (Giselle Itie), are pretty much left out in the cold although Itie's Sandra does get to exchange some hesitant romantic glances with Barney.
Stallone is proving to be a highly capable director in his own right; like I said earlier, he's getting better with age, rather than worse. (But let's just get this out of the way: each of his films within the last four years are way better than anything he directed while still at the height of his career in the '80s and early '90s.). His legendary comeback film "Rocky Balboa" in 2006 is the best film of his so far (and it's my personal favorite "Rocky" picture), and "Rambo" (2008) was a blood-soaked throwback to his other trademark character. "The Expendables" is a throwback to the good old days gone by of the no-holds-barred blow-'em-up action pictures of the '80s and early '90s from which Stallone and many of his other co-stars in the film sprang.
What "The Expendables" does best, other than blowing lots of stuff up without a conscience, is getting all these guys together and having a lot of fun doing it. Some of them (namely Lundgren), haven't appeared in a mainstream Hollywood action flick since the early '90s, and that makes seeing them in action here worth the price of the admission alone. And each star has their time to shine on-screen; Lee Christmas beats up a romantic rival on a basketball court; UFC Champ Randy Couture gets a chance to go toe-to-toe with Munroe's right-hand man Paine (WWF star "Stone Cold" Steve Austin); Lundgren, a black belt in Shotokan Karate, has his big action scene chewed face-to-face with Wushu champ Li; and lastly, we also get to see the famous scene where Austin actually broke Stallone's neck during a fight sequence.
"The Expendables" is living proof that the days of no-holds-barred blow-'em-ups are not yet gone. Age is nothing but a number, that is true, and it's good to be schooled in how to make a no-conscience action flick from guys who know how to make such shameless action pictures. Stallone is miles ahead of most modern-day action over-directors who have no clue about how to properly direct a shamelessly violent action picture. The biggest gripe here is that Stallone often has way too much going on on-screen, and the chaotic MTV-style editing makes it hard to tell what's going on and is the main thing that goes wrong in an otherwise flawed but bold and shamelessly entertaining and bloody action picture.
And keep your eyes open for a three-way ego-stroking match in a church between Stallone, Willis, and one other action star from the '80s who will have to be seen to be believed.
8/10