A very entertaining movie with an all-star cast

Rating: 9/10 (1 March 2017)

Sylvester Stallone's "The Expendables" is a good action movie with probably the best ensemble cast for an action movie, and is one of the best action films this decade. The movie focuses on Barney Ross (Stallone) and his team of mercenaries called "The Expendables" whose members include Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), Yin Yang (Jet Li), Gunnar Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), Hale Caesar (Terry Crews), Toll Road (Randy Couture), Paine (Steve Austin), and Tool (Mickey Rourke). The team is hired by a man named Mr.Church (Bruce Willis) to kill a dictator who is a fugitive from federal hands and rescue a CIA agent who has been kidnapped. Stallone really knows how to direct a very effective action movie and this is very effective, the action sequences in this movie are expertly choreographed so well that if we were to be one of the bad guys in the movie we would and should be very afraid of a team of action stars like that or as Liam Neeson put it two years earlier in "Taken" (2008) "a special set of skills". As Roger Ebert once said "When a movie character is really working we become that character." Which is exactly how I felt while watching this really fun movie that is one hell of a thrill ride. The one minor problem I had was with Stallone's and Dave Callaham's screenplay because it doesn't really explain the characters very well. But I was also very impressed in this movie with then California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's cameo in this movie in a church talking to Ross and Church about the mission in a foreign country. But in the end this an action movie that totally worked in my opinion.