For The Action Fanatic in All of Us

Rating: 7/10 (5 September 2010)

Every now and then we get a great cast of people, usually in dramatic films such as "Bobby" or "Pulp Fiction". But Never in my life have I seen so many Action Icons all in one film at the same time, I mean we have: Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Jason Statham, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, Mickey Rourke, And Arnold Schwarzenegger all rolled up into one movie, It's remarkable! The Expenables is everything a guy flick is made out to be (minus the women) but that doesn't matter because there's so much S**t blowing up and people getting blown in half that it doesn't need women! It's a guy movie and should be viewed as one with the exception that all the stars are big time action hero icons (well for the most part) and sometimes having big stars counts as something. I mean if I saw a film with all the hottest actresses in Hollywood fighting each other, believe me I would pay to see it. (especially if it had Megan Fox). Now as a stand alone film, it doesn't bring anything new to the table, it's your basic shoot em up flick. But the action sequences in this film are shot so well, I promise the audience won't be bored. So the plot goes something like this "A team of mercenaries head to South America on a mission to overthrow a dictator" Enough said, throw in a little background story here, a little character development there, and you have "The Expendables". A proud homage to the action films of the 80's and 90's when it was just Hero's vs. Villains.
But that's pretty much all this film has going for it. Everything else is generic action film BS. The plot, the characters, hell even the villain was pretty generic, and it's kinda predictable. We all know how these films end right? But despite those flaws I found it quite enjoyable! The fight scenes themselves are pretty awesome to watch, I mean the fight scene between Dolph Lundgren and Jet Li was fantastic! Who doesn't want to watch "The Punisher" go up against "The One"? The only thing I wished this film had more of was back story. Most of the characters are just Badass Mercenaries, we don't know much about their past, other than they know how to kill people in gruesome ways. Besides that the only people the film focuses on was Jet Li, Sylvestor Stallone, and Jason Statham. I wanted more of Arnold's Character! But overall I liked it, a solid 7 stars for me. The last half hour of this movie is like an explosive roller coaster ride, and it's for the action fanatic in all of us. There's a scene in particular I found to be absolutely breathtaking, it's the scene where Sylvester Stallone has to haul ass through a Pierre and jump onto an cargo airplane just as it's taking off, the look on his face as he's running is freaking priceless! (Yes ladies and gentlemen, Sly's still got it!). So all in all, it's pretty much a guy flick, fella's you won't be disappointed, ladies, you might want to watch Twilight instead. My rating: Matinée