Lots of booms but no boobs

Rating: 7/10 (23 August 2010)

This cartoonish combo platter of action stars from the last three decades blows stuff up real goodand that's almost all you can ask of something like this, isn't it?
Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) and his right hand man Lee Christmas (Jason Statham) head up a mercenary band made up of predictably colorful characters named Ying Yang (Jet Li), Toll Road (Randy Couture), Hale Caesar (Terry Crews) and the normally named but abnormally huge Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundgren). After saving a ship from some Somali pirates, Barney and company are hired to kill a geographically dubious dictator. General Garza (David Zayas) is styled like a Central American strongman, yet lords over a Caribbean-style island in the Gulf of Mexico.
Barney and Christmas head to the island and check it out, where they meet Garza's daughter Sandra (Giselle Itie). She's sort of a cross between rebel leader and Nicole Richie. Sandra is captured by the evil ex-CIA agent (Eric Roberts) who is the power behind Garza's throne, leading Barney and company to storm the island and free her with a combination of mixed martial arts, bullets and a ludicrously unlimited supply of explosives. Assed are kicked. Bodies are blown apart. Stuff is set on fire. The bad guy gets the hell killed out of him in the end.
The 80s action movie is one of the more maligned modern genres and The Expendables is a good reminder of why that is. It's all fairly dumb, unsophisticated and macho almost, but not quite, to the point of being homoerotic. When the punches and knives are flying; when Stallone is pretending to be the fastest gun on Earth; when Randy Couture and Steve Austin hook up in the ultimate UFC vs. WWE battle; basically anytime a good guy is doing something extremely violent to a bad guy, The Expendables is also fun. There's a way too long lull between the opening action sequence and when things finally get going on Garza's island and the quality of one-liners in the script is pretty bad, but The Expendables is a solid B as 80s action flicks go and gets bumped up to B+ for putting a bunch of genre legends on screen at the same time.
There are a few things in this film I really don't understand. There's a scene that explains Couture's cauliflower ears and another where Li complains about being short that seem like inside jokes where I'm on the outside. I also can't figure out why Charisma Carpenter is in this film. She plays Lee Christmas' girlfriend and that role exists just to give Statham a little more screen time, but it doesn't make sense for that role to be played by a 40 year old actress who doesn't take her clothes off. Don't get me wrong. Carpenter is the personification of Milfy goodness, but I don't know why such a slight and mechanical part didn't go to some 20something babe who was willing to get nude.
In fact, there are no naked chicks at all in The Expendables. Not even a gratuitous scene where somebody goes to a strip club. I really don't get the point of making a testosterone-fueled festival of violence without having a few chicks take their tops off. While it's true that nudity was more the province of 1980s horror movies than 80s action flicks, this is 2010 and a bare boob or two is the least this film could have given us.
The reality of The Expendables isn't nearly as good as the idea of it. That reality is good enough to make this something all action fans, 80s variety or otherwise, should see.