Were any actors expendable?

Rating: 5/10 (21 September 2010)

Well, when I saw the cast I initially went AWESOME, then I remembered what happens when you only have two hours to tell a story and everyone wants just five minutes of dialog... Disaster. It was just a headache seeing how close they came in the first 15 minutes to hooking me, but it just didn't happen, here's what I saw, the first shootout brief negotiation, then all the bad guys get shot, do the good guys do anything totally bad ass? No, they simply go, I'll shoot really unrealistically fast and accurately, that's boring, and how is it gritty if the bad guys don't get a chance to be tormented by the good guys, are the good guys merciful? They could be smart and throw a flash-bang or have the case explode, disappear, bad guys start laughing, then start sniping while something important plays called a SOUNDTRACK, they take cover and get flanked, and it appears more and more dire for the hostage takers, etc, I mean, if the action sequences were intentionally, yet unintentionally (yes, I know that's a contradiction) torturous towards the bad guys, that's the film I want to see irregardless of some plot holes.
The even if you take out the action sequences which are pretty sloppily put together, you have to notice that the dialog actually sets nothing up, Bruce Willis wants the dictator or the guy behind him dead, but I was confused at why Sly and Statham didn't try the first time, Jet Li gets his three minutes explaining everything is harder for him, Couture gets to explain his ears which is pointless, Statham has a girlfriend and beats up some guy. Anyway, all the high profile actors got their screen time, and at that point you have 5-7 protagonists? I lost count at two protagonists. I barely made it through the final action scene, just boring watching all the actors AGAIN, each getting 3 minutes each of fight scenes, they could have at least combined the action so it was team effort, one guy assists the other but so it makes sense, you know, war machine? The bomb planting... did we even need to see the same actor plant 10 bombs each? Could we do one each, and faster so we can see things blow up sooner? To add to that, nobody dies at the end but the bad guys, I don't mean to say that was unrealistic, movies aren't, but I didn't feel that the expendables were quite that bad-ass at the end.
I dunno, I guess the movie's at least OK since it found an audience, maybe the sequel will be better, if there is one, and it's not as passive.