A great premise but in need of better execution

Rating: 5/10 (13 July 2014)

My expectations for the Expendables were extremely high with the potential for some of the best on screen fights. I was expecting something equal to the Bruce Lee v Chuck Norris fight in the Way of the Dragon. But unfortunately what could have been one of the greatest action movies of all time ended up being nothing more than a generic action with little memorability other than its cast.
Ultimately the film is centred around one gimmick. Get the biggest action stars and put them together on screen. At first the premise sounds like a good one, but the problem is that its a tough idea to get right. With so many people in one film it becomes difficult to let any of them shine as they would on a lone outing since they get quite little screen time. What would usually seem cool like machine gunning a room full of bad guys feels mundane when everyone else in the film is doing it too. Also many of the names don't get much more than a cameo with both Willis and Schwarzenegger getting less than 5 minutes of screen time.
Possibly you could make the premise work with a really good script that can juggle all the characters as films like Ocean 11 had done before it. But unfortunately Stallone was not up to the job. Unlike the action movies that made us love these stars, it has no memorable moments. He seemed more relied on the cast to make the film work than using the script to make the actors more effective. The actors do their best to bring some charm to the film and at times it can lead to some cool moments but not often.
The fights seem to blend together since nothing seems to happen other than a lot of explosions and endless numbers of faceless bad guys dying. Watching these fights actually bugged me to see how the actions have changed since those iconic ones of the 70's and 80's. Instead of the realistic blood pouches they used to use, we now only see extremely fake VFX blood splatter. This mixed with the fake gunfire draws little interest in to any of the action scenes and makes it far weaker than those classic actions that it's trying to duplicate.
Plus all of the dialogue is so dull and adds little personality to these heroes. There's no "I am the law" or "I'll be back" lines that will have us quoting these films for years. The best the film will give is a wink to the audience by referencing these lines instead of making its own memorable lines. The script tries to capitalise on out love of great actions instead of making one itself.
If you're a fan of any of the stars it may be worth watching as it's still an OK action. But the only way to get the best of any of these actors is watching them on their own.