This is a Stallone film

Rating: 9/10 (11 August 2010)

I keep reading reviews from people who claim this movie has no story and isn't as good as the recent A Team movie. Some reviewers have said there is no character development and you don't really care about anyone in the film. I beg to differ though. This film is about a group of mercenaries that are paid to do jobs that the government would rather not be associated with. The plot may not be as involved as Inception or The Usual Suspects, but this is a different genre to those films. If you were to hire this from a Video store, it would clearly be found in the Action isle. Stallone obviously understood this and decided to make an action movie for fans of the genre.
You will get your standard corny one liners, big explosions, body dismemberment, hundreds of bullets being fired and big muscles being flexed. What you may not expect to get though is some great chemistry between Statham and Stallone and another superb performance by Mickey Rourke. Jet Li is under utilized but the parts that he's in have some decent martial arts action. Dolph Lungren was surprisingly good and I kept wanting to see more about his character. Randy Couture is barely in it, as is Terry Crews.
The scene with Arnie and Bruce Willis is a dream for anyone brought up on action films from the 1980/90s. Stallone must enjoy watching Dexter, as he cast Julie Benz in Rambo 5 and now he has David Zayas in this film. For wrestling fans, Stone Cold looks like he's the biggest guy in the whole movie and he does a fantastic job as the henchman for Eric Roberts. On the topic of Eric Roberts, a lot of people said he'd make the film too corny - honestly though, he plays the part of the rogue CIA agent rather well. If I were to tighten the script at all, I'd put more work into his dialog and give his background story or motives more screen time. In Rambo 5 Stallone took the time to build the bad guy into a character you really wanted to see dead - I didn't have that desire as badly in this film unfortunately.
I've been waiting for this film for almost a year now and it didn't disappoint. I look forward to The Expendables next outing. 9/10