A disappointing film that didn't know what it wanted to be.

Rating: 5/10 (4 January 2011)

When I first became aware of The Expendables, I was certain that this was going to be the most fun I would have at the cinema in 2010. I bought into the hype, all right, thinking back on my childhood and the cream of the Eighties action crop. It was a time when men were men, women were barely there and more bullets were fired in two hours than in all of World War II. I went into the screening ready for a mix of cheese and awesomeness.
What I got was something far less. The Expendables has one major problem: it doesn't know what kind of film it wants to be. It seems Sylvester Stallone wasn't sure if he should make a balls to the wall Eighties action throwback or a serious examination of the effect war has on men who live for battle. In the end, he tried to make the movie both, and in trying to be both, it was neither. The much-vaunted all-star cast turned out to be largely wasted, with Stallone and Jason Statham taking up much of the running time, and in Statham's case half of that was an unnecessary subplot about his ex-girlfriend. If Stallone had decided to follow this side of the story properly - the impact of the job on personal relationships - instead of using it to seemingly pad out the running time, then maybe it wouldn't have seemed so contrived.
Of the rest of the cast, only Mickey Rourke leaves much of an impression. His one major scene, recounting an event in Bosnia, steals the show and left me wanting to learn his story, not that of the Expendables. The action is decent but many of the most mouth-watering set pieces, such as a fight between Dolph Lundgren and Jet Li, are poorly shot. Terry Crews gives us the most memorable action sequence of the movie when he decimates bad guys with an automatic shotgun, but the film is otherwise uninspired.
The Expendables is about as average a film as you can find - in fact, it's below average. It wasn't the best action film of the Summer, never mind of all time, as some might have you believe. If the cast wasn't full of big names, how would this have differed in any way from the straight-to-DVD action schlock that you can find in bargain bins everywhere? It's a wasted opportunity and one that is far from essential viewing.