Nitty-Gritty Action packed in explosive material.

Rating: 7/10 (19 August 2010)

One would feel that pumping in almost 5 action movie stars belonging to different genres would lead to the creation of an unsurpassable action thriller. Those of us who held the view stated above would feel a little disappointed because The Expendables isn't spectacular. It is a decent action film but hardly comes up to the level given it's star cast.
The movie isn't bad. I mean, if you look at it objectively the film has almost everything a die hard(pun intended) action movie fan can ask for. Over the top stunts, Hunk Male bonding, Decently chiseled Bad guys, good locales and an amazing background score. What it lacks however is that little piece of coherence and polish which separates good movies and great movies in this particular genre.
Now there are a few rules which one must obey while watching such movies 1. Don't look for deep philosophy 2. Abandon all prejudices against clichés 3. Go with the Flow and love the gore.
The Expendables starts with a bang and pulls along till the very end , but the viewer feels a little dejected in the middle segment due to the lack of stunts and also fully furnished action sequences. In fact most of the cast becomes fully functional only in the second half.
The movie takes off a lot of times but loses steam due to an evident failure on the part of the director to balance the screen presence of his key players.The movie gyrates whimsically through it's entire length.
Having said that , I wouldn't want anybody to read too much into it as the movie with all it's follies holds the audience and there are some pretty solid adrenaline rushing scenes .
The camera work is really good and the team manages to use still cameras and moving camera-frames in tandem, thus producing Die-Hard and Bourne effects together.
Given the storyline, the movie couldn't have been made any better than it has been and hence deserves a place on your hard disk, if not for anything else then for the fact that Arnold and Sylvester share the screen for an entertaining 5 minutes in movie history.