It has explosions, fist-fights, knifes, big guns and some of the greatest action legends but still it's the typical "Just when" type of movie...

Rating: 6/10 (13 August 2010)

I just came from the premiere of The Expendables and I must say one thing: "DAMN, the movie was short!". Expendables is exactly what I expected. Some of the biggest stars from the best action-movies ever made thrown in together in a great non-stop action movie. It was awesome as the typical "dude" would say.
Expendables shares the story of a group of mercenaries that have no boundaries when lots of money are mixed up in certain situations. All things cool before emotions are caught up in the game (as always). But leave that away for a second and think about all the characters in the movie. Each one of them was a pure bad-ass: Stallone is the smart guy with the plan and the guns, Statham was a knife-throwing machine same as Rourke, Couture and Li are skilled in close-combat techniques, Crews deals with the big guns and Lundgre, well.... Lundgren it's kind of the bad-ass of the bad-asses. He was just hilarious but a killing machine also (I still laugh at his first appearance or at his "insect" scene, the way he delivered that line was gold). Though the main characters are handled well I was disappointed in throwing Arnold in this movie. His character does not make any sense to the story whatsoever. It's just thrown there to make people realize that he played in this movie even if you forget about him 5 minutes later. Another character which had a lot of potential since it was so sarcastic and funny was Bruce's "Mr. Church". As hilarious as some of the characters were they all looked like some "steroid-machines" besides Jet Li and I hate to say it but some of them got low time on camera while others appeared constantly. The villains portrayed by Eric Roberts and his "monkey-bodyguard" Steve Austin balanced the movie pretty well till the moment you realize you just witnessed a "genocide" made by the hands of just five bone-breakers.
The action in the movie is intense and there is a very good choreography used in the close-combat scenes. But with all these aspects of a great action-movie I encountered a big problem since the beginning of the movie. The story is just too flat, it looks too much like they could've named the movie "The Expectables" instead of "The Expendables". Not too mention that even if you have a vibe of the 80's and 90's action movies you lose yourself into a big "just when" type of movie. What is a "just when" movie? It's when something bad is so close to happening but it is interrupted by the good guys. It's just too much of a cliché. Each and every single scene dealt with the "just when" aspect. This is where I started to drop points heavily for this movie. Stallone could have come up with a fresh story even of he wanted to keep things old-school, but I guess brains really do the difference in this case. Another thing I was kind of dazzled were the explosions which were so good but too god damn many. I mean, they came over a island to "save" it and they blew like half of it. You got at least 20 minutes of things blowing up. You could hear Stallone each minute: "Hey, blow up the mansion", "Hey, blow up the sewers", "Hey blow up that truck", "Hey, throw some grenades in those tents"... I mean, those explosions were solid made but still it was just ridiculous...
As far as the execution, like I said, the effects were great (the explosions, the splattered blood or the collapsing building). The disappointing thing with the cinematography was that some of the handled-camera shots were kind of shaky and disturbing to watch. The problem with the score seems to me actually a little bit weird since I liked more the old-beer-songs instead of the composed one which didn't quite match all the scenes. I think I said enough about this movie. I think it's the best straight-action movie this year, I think the movie delivers good entertainment but I also think there was a laaaargeee space for improvements since it had such a potential. As far as the talks behind a sequel, I would like to see one since I enjoyed the movie and it deserved the money payed for but I would also like to see a better story because this one simply (if I can be harsh) sucked, the comic lines being actually the best thing out of it.