It takes a special kind of person to say there is never enough — never enough guns, never enough blood, never enough violence, mayhem or campy demeanors. That’s what the chiseled, mindless-meathead action-hero byproducts of the 1980s were all about: excessively ending lives until their current film’s problem was solved.
Luckily for mush-mouthed action movie figurehead Sylvester Stallone (Rambo), his latest directorial effort The Expendables shows a newfound understanding of his group of actors’ place in the pop-culture spectrum, leading to generally positive results.
Yes, The Expendables is an absolutely ridiculous affair, a feverishly paced romp through multiple action set-pieces strung together weakly by the notion that the film’s audience might actually require some semblance of plot.
Like Wes Craven’s Scream before it, Stallone’s film proudly flaunts and quietly spoofs the often silly aspects of his movie’s genre. At the very least, The Expendables‘s non-stop camp and circumstance seems intentional, to the point where it feels right to give Stallone the benefit of the doubt and assume his movie is meant in part to be a self-referential spoof.
The Expendables revolves around Barney Ross (Stallone), the leader of a group of mercenaries who get hired intermittently by the U.S. government to do only the dirtiest jobs.
The advance hype for this movie rested quite literally on the “strength” of the cast, as it promised to bring together just about every noteworthy badass since Stallone started acting.
As a result, Ross’s team consists of Gunner (Dolph Lundgren, Icarus) and martial arts maven Yin Yang (Jet Li, Ocean Heaven), as well as Toll Road, played by mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter Randy Couture (The Scorpion King: Rise of a Warrior), and Lee Christmas (Jason Statham, 13), the latter of whom Stallone spends most of the movie trying in vain to pass on his action-legend torch to.
With badass tattoo artist Tool (Mickey Rourke, Iron Man 2) as an intermediary between the team and its clients, the Expendables — yes, they call themselves that in the film — set off on a new mission to help a man they call Mr. Church (Bruce Willis, Cop Out) take down a ruthless South American dictator, General Garza (David Zayas, Coach).
They soon realize they are also dealing with a shadowy American businessman powering the mayhem (Eric Roberts, Groupie) and his ludicrously named bodyguards Paine (Steve Austin, The Stranger) and The Brit (Gary Daniels, Hunt to Kill).
The plot is forgettable, but that is completely beside the point. Again, this film is just one action set-piece following another, with each designed to showcase a featured actor’s talents.
Whether it be Yin Yang’s 10-minute marital arts tutorial on the traitorous Gunner’s face or Hale Caesar’s (Terry Crews, Gamer) rain of explosive shotgun shells on an army of faceless goons, the action scenes give every actor at least one moment of gory glory.
This film effectively has no real characters because every actor is just playing themselves. Between action sequences, the dialogue is mostly humorous, allowing the actors to make fun of themselves, further solidifying the notion that Stallone intended this film to be a bit of throwback and a lot of spoof.
The big cameo scene involving a three-way verbal war between Stallone, Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines) is laugh-out-loud funny, but the jokes are only funny to those who know the actors, as opposed to the films zero-dimensional characters.
Many of the film’s moments are jokes in themselves, such as Toll Road and Paine’s hand-to-hand death match, which is really a battle between Couture and WWE’s Austin, which in turn makes a very purposeful joke about the difference between MMA fighting and professional wrestling.
All the spoofing and ridiculousness aside, the action sequences are surprisingly well-rounded.
Sure, Stallone throws in the clichés as necessary, usually to poke fun at them, but many situations are quite enthralling, and most of the deaths are so grotesquely hilarious that the crowd will find itself in approvingly uproarious laughter.
After the gratuitous explosions stop and the curtain closes, viewers should remember whilst wiping the water from their eyes that the film was meant to poke fun at the ’80s stereotypes these actors helped create.
The Expendables does not do much to make itself memorable other than having a massive cast, which is at first a gimmick and then an integral piece of the plot structure. What movie-goers are left with is a second-rate film with second-rate action and a mostly washed-up cast.
However, the film comes off as an honestly good time because Stallone and the cast never let the viewers forget that as filmmakers, they were not necessarily aiming for something either groundbreaking or high in quality.
Even with all the excessive guns and muscles, somehow this film still is not quite enough to be a classic. Still, that does not mean people with disposable cash should not give the film a fighting chance.
RATING: 2.5 stars out of 5
diversions@umdbk.com
