Not quite, Sly. Not quite.

Rating: 4/10 (22 May 2011)

What a cast. Many of these A-list actors could fill cinemas on their own. Putting them all together in one movie should surely multiply its appeal and magic, something like a Dream Team? Predictably, it's not the case. Neither of those actors, some of whom my childhood movie heroes, get enough time to develop their characters on-screen. They're all empty shells of action heroes, one trying to be cooler than the other. Maybe just with Stallone and Statham playing off each other, this movie would've amounted to something more.
Today's coolness and manliness then, according to this movie, consists of riding motorbikes or hot rods and killing lots of bad people for money. I do not really agree. Going back to a benchmark of mine, The A-Team has shown that being cool doesn't depend on scenes of gory, meaningless killings. Yes, Rambo also killed a lot, but that was not as meaningless as this. There was some personal motivation and reason. Here, they piled on kill after kill, none of which have any impact.
With these actors, the plot should've been much more focused on hand-to-hand fights. Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, all their fighting abilities are criminally underused. And when there's a short fight scene with Jet Li for instance, they don't really use their own style (kung fu in this case), plus we get the usual bad "american" fight editing, using shaky cameras and extremely short cuts.
The humor is also badly limping. The plot is rather ridiculous (at one point i thought "did they really just make up an island for this movie?") and only a means to generate various unlikely scenes of violence. Don't get me wrong, i have nothing against violent movies, but this left me feeling empty and detached.
Too many cooks spoil the broth, never has this saying been more appropriate. Had this been a more focused attempt with two or three main characters, it might have worked better.