Awesome cast, mediocre action, and surprisingly little fun.

Rating: 6/10 (31 August 2013)

Given the amount of 80's action movie geek enthusiasm I had in anticipation of this movie, i was surprised at how little amount of fun i had watching it. It seems Stallone wasn't quite up to the admittedly Hurculean task of writing/directing/starring in The Expendables. There were too few great moments of interaction between the characters, not enough witty banter, not enough chemistry between the characters. Having seen the making of and behind the scenes footage of the expendables, it seems like Sly relied too heavily upon ad-libbing and improvisational dialogue due to his guerrilla style film-making approach. The action scenes were pretty forgettable, with the notable exception of the dual 50 cal/ flare gun dock explosion scene. Stallone and Statham get top billing and screen time, but Mickey Rourke steals the show with his dialogue on salvation and damnation. Dolph Lundgren upstages everyone else with his sheer presence alone. Jet Li's character gets some good screen time and one of the films best fight sequences, but again his dialogue is awkwardly written. Eric Roberts does an adequate job in the villain role, but couldn't they have found a better actor to go up against this dream team of Hollywood titans? The rest of the cast is generally pushed aside and given only brief screen time which fails to leave much of an impression. Sadly the entire thing manages to underwhelm and seems to underline the fact that most of these guys best days are behind them. Which is a shame when so many of us fans were hoping for a glorious return to form. Still, The Expendables is worth watching, just keep your expectations realistic. 6/10.