The Expandables: Deadly dull

You would assume that a movie that aims to be the ultimate action flick can’t possibly be much worse than those spawned at the height of the action genre in the eighties. At worst, you could get brainless, campy, violent entertainment, and The Expendables is brainless, campy and violent — but it is also a dreadful bore. No one should know more about action movies than director Sylvester Stallone and his cast of carefully assembled action stars but The Expendables misses the opportunity to say something essential about the genre. Despite the deafening explosions and oodles of gore, it is a severely underwhelming experience, lacking the enthusiasm to even be a decent action feature. It is one of those unfortunate movies that, despite being consistently bad, is never so sublimely bad that it becomes good.

Stallone plays Barney Ross, the ringleader of a group of hired guns, The Expendables, which includes blades expert Lee Christmas (played by Jason Statham, upon whom falls the grave duty of providing the eye candy in this cast of aging veterans), martial artist Yin Yang (Jet Li), Gunnar Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), Hale Caesar (Terry Crews) and Toll Road (Randy Couture).

Given a contract to take down the dictatorship of General Graza in the fictional South American island of Vilena, Barney and Lee go on a reconnaissance mission. Barney is smitten by General Graza’s daughter Sandra, an idealistic revolutionary who puts her life at risk by refusing to leave the island with them. The mission goes awry and Barney and Lee barely escape with their lives. Back home, The Expendables agree that it is too risky to continue and call off the contract. Then, in a sentimental reversal entirely at odds with his chosen line of work and his personal machismo, Barney is deeply affected by a teary speech on tainted ideals delivered by Tool (Mickey Rourke), his tattoo artist, and decides to go back to Vilena, essentially to rescue Sandra.

The story — essentially a rehash — is simplistic, but the chaotic direction muddles even the most straightforward developments, making this movie painful to follow. The fight sequences were particularly mystifying, as one could not make out what was happening. The screenplay is, simply put, pointless, and the actors often speak like dull toddlers who don’t know how to use their words, as this exchange between Barney and Gunner illustrates.

Gunner: “Think I’ll need stitches?”

Barney: “Maybe.”

Gunner: “I hate stitches.”

Barney: “Everyone does.”

The high point of the movie is the scene which briefly unites Stallone with action stalwarts Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis. Willis is Church, a CIA spook, and Schwarznegger is Barney’s rival. This is the closest The Expendables comes to self-reflection and provides a delicious reflexive moment which is not fully exploited. A boring, ill-conceived film, The Expendables runs on machismo but banks on sentimentality, not just the sentimentality in the movie, but of those fans of the genre who yearn for the unsophisticated blood and gore of the 80s.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 9^th, 2010.