The Expendables
Rated: 15 (UK)
Drector: Slyvester Stallone
Cast: Slyvester Stallone, Jet Li, Jason Statham,Eric Roberts, David Zayas, Terry Crews, Dolph Lundgren, Steve Austin,Randy Couture, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis
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“Take me down to Paradise City
where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Please wont you take me home!!!”
Thats the words that seem to spin around my head when it comes to THE EXPENDABLES and of course the sight of some the 1980’s big hitters in the action movie genre all together on one screen mouth watering right? Yeah it was until the movie kicked off.
There was many bad things about this movie with the first pitfall been no on-screen chemistry and it was more like egotastic actors trying to compete against the younger actors, tell us corny jokes parading there so called strength through the bigger gun they have the bigger testosterone they think have rather a reality check that there really washed up has beens trying to live on past glories.
So the story morning glory? Barney Ross (Stallone) and his merry band of mercenaries known as the expendable who easliy take out somali pirates with there array of nice weapons are hired to take out a dictator (David Zayas) of an fictional Central American country of Villena by an obnoxious source (Willis). After an trip to the island to observe the target its figured that things arent what they seem and that the target is simply a puppet for an rogue CIA Agent (Eric Roberts) who actually has his own little band of merry men in the form of Gary Daniels and ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin “Give Me A Hell Yeah! ….Hell No!”.
I should have known from the first trailer that spoiled the so called cameos of Bruce Willis and Arnold swcharzanegger that the movie was destined to fail. Giving away too much in the trailers/marketing backed with a predictable poor script spoils any chance of actually enjoying this. Another big no no was the CGI and the ‘gore’ element in blood which personally looked like something out of a video game but Ive seen more realistic blood actually in a video game.The big explosive scene you would think Stallone was trying to reinact another movie from the 1980’s as in Chariot’s Of Fire, but if you actually played the scene at normal speed there wouldn’t be any difference as this is guys in in there 50s & 60’s (with a few in between).
So Mr Rourke why? Why ‘Brother’ did you do it? You would think after the success of Aronofksy’s The Wrestler a lot more better qaulity of parts would come Mickey Rourke way with his career on the up again after so many years in the wilderness, he must have taken too many bumps on the head from Tony Stark (Iron Man) which has pushed him off his path slightly. Rourke did however give one of the ‘serious’ better parts of the movie with his battered tired soldier speech a man who gave up on countless killing and cant take no more. He did give his best impression of a certain known character of from Lord Of The Rings movies with his hobbit style pipe in one hand and his paint brush in the other and if we can go with the news a certain part for Bilbo Baggins maybe lurking around again so something to consider and if you do you’ll need to cut down on the ‘Brother’ thing.
The Expendable falls short of that no brainer dumb action movie it wanted to be, it go to deep into drama & emotions, with plenty of banter flying around but the characters had no connection or depth but give these guys some nice toys thats purpose is to kill or mame this motely crew will cause havoc and ask questions later. Been a kid of the 1980’s I really wanted to see these old boys do it again as they did back in the day but what it actually did is make me remember how bad the action movies where, there was simply more cheese on the screen than in my nacho I had whilst I watched.
If you love your action heros whose brains are in their muscles rather in there heads mixed in with some acting which is straight out of a direct to dvd movie you’ll love this but other than that stay away. Mr Stallone if you wanted to make a good honest decent action flick which still has lots of cheesy fun but looks better you should have hired the A-TEAM!
Dah dah dah dah..dah..dah..dahhhhhh!
Movie Rating: 2.5/5
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Trailer:
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Thepeoplesmovies.com 