The Expendables (2010)
The Expendables
★★☆☆☆
Directed by: Sylvester Stallone
Written by: David Callaham and Sylvester Stallone
What amused me the most about The Expendables is how there is zero emotional heft to the film, and the protagonists are never in serious danger. You might think, in a film like this where there are a half-dozen roughnecks as the principals, that one or more of them was destined to croak in your standard action/buddy formula to provide a reason for the survivors to rally and defeat the odds. But no. Everyone lives. I guess that's a spoiler? The thing is, it's never really even implied that one of these guys might not make it. They take down literally hundreds of apparently highly-trained soldiers with the realism and nonchalance of saturday morning G.I.Joes, only with more blood and shorn body parts and stuff.
I guess this is supposed to be an old-school action film with practically every 80s and 90s action star under the sun, but even though we're supposed to care that Jason Statham's Lee Christmas lost his girl to a douchey jock, it's not possible because Lee Christmas is not a character but a tool for the script to show that even guys who stick knives into people's necks for a living feel sad sometimes. There's some sort of claptrap about these mercenaries doing things for a greater cause, but it's muddy and uninteresting. There's one scene that could be decent but it's like something from another movie, where Mickey Rourke as Tool reminisces about the darkness that weighs on a conscience from senseless brutality, but whatever power could have come from a monologue like that is comically undone by the senseless brutality the movie traffics in to sell itself. I guess it's okay to watch people being cut apart for entertainment but if you have to do the cutting it makes you wax poetic in a blue light? I didn't really get what it was all about. Really it's just some random words to make the audience feel like there is a moral imperative for Stallone and Statham and Jet Li and some other people to go slaughter people.
There's really no point to this movie, which I say knowing full well that when I started watching it I just wanted to watch a big dumb action movie. I guess it barely succeeds at that, but nothing else going on is worth much of your time, except to remind yourself occasionally that Stallone is old enough to be Jason Statham's dad, is old enough to be the grandfather of Giselle Itié (who is the sorta love interest, Sandra) and yet somehow manages to not be comical just on a surface level as he engages in cinematic fisticuffs with Stone Cold Steve Austin. It's pretty impressive, really.
