Crappy action movie

Rating: 4/10 (17 September 2010)

Whenever a movie has to boast an "all-star" cast, it usually means it's trying to make up for a lame script with star power. Unfortunately, "The Expendables" is no exception to this rule.
At first glance, it seems to be a great idea to throw in as many stars as possible into one movie. That is, until you realize that the more characters a story has, the less time it has to develop all of them.
I realize this is an action movie but even action movies need to develop their characters. If we're to care about these characters at all, we need to know who they are and why we should root for them. That simply doesn't happen in this movie.
Let me take some time here to throw out my thoughts on each of the main actors in the movie and what I liked/disliked about them:
Sylvester Stallone: I consider myself to be a fan of Stallone's. I loved both"Rocky Balboa" and "Rambo" and really thought he was going to pull off something cool with this movie, but he didn't. He seems kind of tired throughout the movie, at least in his performance but his action sequences come off well for the most part.
Jason Statham: I do not consider myself to be a fan of Statham's, although I will admit that in this movie, he stole the show. He and Stallone's characters were probably the most developed of all, but that's not saying much. His action sequences were pretty awesome.
Jet Li: He's poorly utilized in this movie and has a significantly smaller part than either Stallone or Statham and his lines are all pretty stupid. His action sequences were good, but there wasn't enough of them.
Eric Roberts: He was decent as the bad guy in the movie, I wanted to hit him, so I suppose that counts for something. I couldn't tell if Roberts was annoying or if that was the character he was trying to play. Either way, he's pretty grating to watch.
Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger: I put both of these guys together for no other reason than neither one of them is in the movie long enough to justify a separate paragraph for each. In the church scene, where Stallone, Willis and Schwarzenegger meet discuss the possibility of going on a mission (which becomes the main plot line of the story), both Stallone and Schwarzenegger seem to be out "alpha'd" by Willis. Although it was cool to see these guys share the screen together, the end result left something to be desired, in my opinion.
Although Randy Couture was far from a main character in the story, I feel he deserves a special mention for what is quite possibly the worst acting I've ever seen aside from Robert Pattinson. This guy needs to go back to fighting in a cage for his money. Wow! Horrible, horrible actor.
There were many attempts at humor in this movie that fell completely flat. I didn't laugh not once, nor did anyone else sitting in the movie theater. That's kind of unusual for an action movie these days not to feature any great one-liners. Action movies are known for their one-liners and yet this movie didn't produce not one of them.
The blood/gore effects were pretty cheesy and were obviously computer generated. It was distracting and really took away from the intensity of the action sequences. I guess nobody ever thought to use good ol' fashioned fake blood? It looks so much better on screen than the digitized crap they subjected us to here.
I don't really know what else to say about the movie other than to strongly urge anyone reading this who hasn't seen it already to avoid it at all costs. For the people that have seen it, tell your friends and family to save their money and go see something else.