More Cobra Than Die Hard

Rating: 5/10 (17 August 2010)

I think it's fair to say that Sylvester Stallone is living in the past. Back in the day when men were men and guns were bazookas, Sly was running around a jungle, building intricate booby traps with a bunch of sticks and blasting away psychotic gunmen in grocery stores. He was an all-out action star, one who epitomised the popular gritty, muscle-bound flicks of the '80s, and he's never really left this mind-set.
His last film, 2008's Rambo, was a return to his beloved roots, playing the famous Vietnam veteran once again, appeasing most of his testosterone-hungry fans. I wasn't one of them. It was bloody, it was brutal and it was actually a bit boring, or at least it was for me. However, it seems that the 64 year old liked the familiar taste of the now-outdated genre and has decided to attempt a loving comeback for it, bringing together the very best action heroes working today for its primary cast, including Jason Statham and Jet Li. Steven Seagal can suck it.
The Expendables stars Stallone as Barney Ross, the head of a group of professional mercenaries, consisting of Lee Christmas (Statham), Ying Yang (Li), Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), Hale Caesar (Terry Crews) and Toll Road (Randy Couture). How they came up with these names, I don't know.
They're on a mission to take down the evil dictator of the fictional South American country Vilena, General Garza (David Zayas), who unflinchingly kills people and has a big mansion and is just a fat, foreign bastard with a Craig David beard. Turns out he is not their only target, as crooked ex-CIA agent James Munroe (Eric Roberts) is the well- dressed controller of puppet Garza's strings.
As expected, this is all leading up to an eardrum-bursting, vein-popping 20 minute long finale filled with gigantic explosions, erratic gunfire and beefy men angrily shouting at one another. There's even a moment where Couture watches a man roast in flames and runs up to punch the poor burning guy in the face. I mean, holy hell.
It all sounds epic and, occasionally, it is. But to be brutally honest, there's not much separating this from the sleazy, straight-to-DVD fair you might see in a bargain bin at Blockbuster. I don't intend any disrespect to Stallone, he clearly has a lot of admiration for the genre and he has fully displayed it here, but the end result is less than satisfying.
First off, a lot of the editing in the action scenes is all over the place with about ten cuts in just over a second. It's like Transporter 3, where the action sequences - the most important aspect of the action genre - are murdered by frustratingly frequent edits, rendering them near incoherence.
They're also filmed in the style of shaky cam, a condition where the cameraman seems to be suffering from Parkinson's disease. Made famous by Paul Greengrass with his popular Bourne flicks, it's headache-inducing and I certainly don't remember this being an aspect of '80s action movies. So I have to wonder why Stallone decided to film The Expendables in this spastic way.
Likewise, his script, written alongside David Calllaham, is rather patchy, containing some weak writing with irritating clichés. These clichés may be deliberate, but that doesn't stop them from inspiring an eye roll. Saying that, there is the occasional one-liner worthy of a giggle. After blasting some bullet holes into a recently interrogated traitor, Roberts proclaims, "Now we can see inside of him...and I see lies." There's also a part where Lundgren stomps on a dude's face and simply says, "Insect." Genius.
One of the most prominent features of The Expendables is, of course, the glorious cast, crammed with muscular action stars. Most of the film's focus is on Stallone and Statham, who both work fine on their own, but are lacking in chemistry when on-screen together. Stallone may not have much in terms of a personality other than "he's the leader", but he's acceptable. Statham has his usual, natural charisma at hand and he uses it to the fullest, yet the two don't quite mesh together.
Lundgren is marvelous, with his character turning to the dark side not long into the film, making for a memorable baddie role. The main villain, Eric Roberts, isn't a terrific one - all he does is wear tuxedos, smirk and act like a total ass - but he does what he can with the role.
Aside from Jet Li (who has a dandy hand-to-hand fight with Lundgren), everyone else feels underused, a common symptom of an ensemble cast such as this. Crews and Couture don't do anything until the finale, and even then, they don't do much. What could have solved this would be to remove the subplot of Statham's cheating girlfriend - which doesn't go anywhere at all and is simply a useless time filler - and insert more scenes to develop these characters.
Mickey Rourke is a fabulous actor, undoubtedly the most respectable name in the cast list and his talents shine bright in the three scenes he's in, the second of which contains a heartfelt monologue about heartbreak on a past mission. It's a shame he's not used more, because his performance momentarily lifts the film sky high above the punch-punch, bang-bang of the rest of the movie.
I can't help but feel that The Expendables' vast potential has been squandered. Stallone had the opportunity to do something spectacular, but what we've ended up with is a bit of a convoluted mess. There are too many characters, leading to many being undeveloped and the '80s action vibe isn't enough to hold it together. Some fans may find gratification here, but I didn't. For me, it was more Cobra than Die Hard. And Cobra sucked.