Bad Shakespeare

Rating: 3/10 (31 August 2010)

Last year we saw 79 year-old Clint Eastwood knocking heads as Walt Kowalski in Gran Torino. This year, Sly Stallone (64 years-old) indulges in a game of one-upmanship by uniting the ageing talent of the 80's and early 90's action movies for The Expendables. Thus we have Sly, Dolph Lundgren (52), Mickey Rourke (57) and in cameo roles Bruce Willis (55) and Arnie (63) together on screen for the first time flexing their muscles and spouting one-liners using a wide range of accents and varying degrees of mumbling. Thankfully there is an injection of young blood too, with Jason Statham, Jet Li, Terry Cruz and a number of other relatively youthful studs battling it out along with the fogies. That's an impressive cast list and it makes for a good poster. No doubt Van Damme, Seagal and Jackie Chan are wondering if their invitation got lost in the post.
This being a film written, directed and starring Stallone, his hero Barney Ross is all together a different breed from Mr Walt Kowalski. Sly as Ross has everything your paradigm 80's action hero must have – bulging biceps, rippling abs, a near intolerance to pain and a macho exterior masking a somewhat more sensitive interior. It strikes me that the target audience for this film is so used to these character tropes and beyond that the style and language of an action film, that there is more fun to be had in toying with these expectations than there is in creating a film that meets these expectations exactly. But, this is the film Sly set out to make: an 80's throwback with a cast of some of the most beloved action stars of that generation. This is no Gran Torino, this is Commando, Bloodsport or Under Siege with an ensemble cast.
The plot follows a team of mercenaries led by Barney Ross as they attempt to overthrow a military dictatorship on a fictional South American island. It's soon revealed that the real 'baddie' is ex-CIA agent James Munroe (Eric Roberts) who hopes to make a profit using the island's natural resources to aid his drug trafficking. Munroe is a real 80's-action-movie, no-substance villain, with no motives beyond making a quick dollar and an unnecessary and unexplained sadistic streak. Ross's motives are questionable too. Why does Ross persuade his team to free the island from the grips of this military dictatorship? Can it be that our hero sympathises with the plight of the lower-classes who suffer under this new rule? No, the motivating factor here is his feelings for Sandra (Gisele Itié) the beautiful, uncorrupted General's daughter, whom he hopes to save.
The story is mostly just an excuse to move from fight to fight so we can see a variety of old favourites face off against each other. There's a degree of unpredictability to these fights that make them fun, even if they have been enhanced with CGI, or the erratic close-ups make them hard to follow. At one stage a fight erupts between Jet Li and Dolph Lundgren for reasons too boring to mention. Although I was in disbelief at the film's choice of victor, the fight ignited something primal in me which I think goes some of the way to explaining the film's appeal. Many of us come to a film like this with prior convictions. Those who watched the kind of films The Expendables pays homage to have no doubt participated in conversations or debates about "who's the toughest" or which action-hero would win in a fight to the death. Our favourite action heroes come with expectations – they are the toughest or the quickest and they cannot be beat. So when two of them face off, we are already routing for one to win – there are added stakes which a fight between, say, Sly and an extra fail to inspire.
It's here that I think The Expendables misses a grand opportunity. If you're going to have a film that's as heavy as this on the action with this number of well known action stars, why not have them face off against each other more often? We have had plenty of opportunities to see Stallone and Statham battle nameless masses in the Rambo and Transporter series, but when will get the chance to see them face off against each other? The fight between Lundgren and Li worked for me in a way in which the rest of the film didn't, because I had an interest in which the victor would be that was above and beyond the plot stipulations of this film.
At its worst, The Expendables serves as a reminder of some of the worst aspects of action films. Undeveloped characters who fail to spark any interest (the attempt to give Jason Statham's character some background is predictable and tiresome), dull plotting and mindless violence. Stallone also fails to provide us with any memorable action or notable one-liners, two elements that were essential to the kind of populist action movie that this movie seeks to emulate. All this culminates in a final showdown where our team of unconcerned mercenaries lay waste island through various means in order to stop the nefarious Munroe and his men. It all reminded me of a scene from Team America: World Police, in which whilst attempting to obstruct terrorist activity in Paris, the "Team" manages to leave the capital in ruins, including the destruction of the Eiffel Tower (which in turn collapses onto the Arc de Triomphe). The Expendables could have worked had Sly chosen to have had some fun with a well known formula. As it is, however, it's a joyless, soulless affair.