The Expendables (18.)
Directed by Sylvester Stallone
Starring Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Mickey Rourke, Eric Roberts, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren. 103 mins.
In the wake of Toy Story 3 someone online came up with a top ten of films that make grown men cry. It was rubbish because it was full of films like Toy Story 3, films that make everybody cry. A valid list of films that make grown men, and only grown men, cry would need to include films such as Escape to Victory, The Great Escape, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Rocky 1, 3 & 6.
With its title The Expendables makes a promise. It promises to serve up the kind a self pitying, masochistic, futile, hail of bullets martyrdom of the type that made the end of The Wild Bunch so affecting. The notion of Stallone gathering up a bunch of his 80s action movie contemporaries and casting them as soldiers for hire in a Dirty Dozen style romp gave rise to expectations that this would be something grand and gaudy and unsightly, a maudlin machismo equivalent of The Passion of The Christ. But this isn’t a film to make men cry, it’s a film to make them smirk.
Having criticised it for what it isn’t, let’s criticise it for what it is – a crummy 80s action movie, made two decades too late. Now as undemanding action films go, it is undemanding, and loud, and nostalgic, and that may be enough for many viewers. But I thought this was supposed to be a big deal.
The Expendables lets you down in so many ways. It is supposed to be a men on a mission movie but it takes over an hour to get to the mission and when it comes it is rushed and oafish. It isn’t the ultimate collection of action heroes we were promised either. Most of the big names just takes cameos (the Planet Hollywood reunion with Bruce and Arnie is just one scene) or sit on the sidelines (Rourke.)
And everybody is so fantastically old. Now I know that that is the whole point but there is a shot of Stallone running to jump into a departing seaplane that’s almost painful to watch. It’s like one of those charity football matches where old pros relive past glories. Statham and Li take the roles of the youngster who have to make up numbers and add a bit of energy
Having drafted in a supreme martial artist like Jet Li, Stallone just has him fire machine guns most of the time, because he’d just show them all up if he did anything else. Fair enough, but then the film foists the improbability of having him lose not once, but twice, to Lundgren in a fight, even though Lundgren looks like something that has been put together on a laboratory slab.
With its tale of a group of experienced mercenaries heading off to overthrow a foreign leader, in this case a Latin American dictator, it’s like an a remake of The Wild Geese, the 70s film is which various ageing British acting legends – Burton, Moore, Harris – made themselves look foolish playing soldiers.
They weren’t particularly convincing but at least they could deliver their lines. The dialogue in Expendables is basically: Sly “Muh muh muh,” Dolph, “Mm, Mm, mm,” Mickey, “Muh …, Muh Muhh … muh,” Jason, “Grrrr, Grrr, Grrrr.” And while the average Wild Goose looked tastefully wasted thanks to decades of hard boozing and hard living, the average Expendable's looks have been wrecked by steroids and plastic surgery. Stallone resembles Liza Minnelli’s last husband.
Read Expendables 2 review
Read Expendables 3 review
Directed by Sylvester Stallone
Starring Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Mickey Rourke, Eric Roberts, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren. 103 mins.
In the wake of Toy Story 3 someone online came up with a top ten of films that make grown men cry. It was rubbish because it was full of films like Toy Story 3, films that make everybody cry. A valid list of films that make grown men, and only grown men, cry would need to include films such as Escape to Victory, The Great Escape, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Rocky 1, 3 & 6.
With its title The Expendables makes a promise. It promises to serve up the kind a self pitying, masochistic, futile, hail of bullets martyrdom of the type that made the end of The Wild Bunch so affecting. The notion of Stallone gathering up a bunch of his 80s action movie contemporaries and casting them as soldiers for hire in a Dirty Dozen style romp gave rise to expectations that this would be something grand and gaudy and unsightly, a maudlin machismo equivalent of The Passion of The Christ. But this isn’t a film to make men cry, it’s a film to make them smirk.
Having criticised it for what it isn’t, let’s criticise it for what it is – a crummy 80s action movie, made two decades too late. Now as undemanding action films go, it is undemanding, and loud, and nostalgic, and that may be enough for many viewers. But I thought this was supposed to be a big deal.
The Expendables lets you down in so many ways. It is supposed to be a men on a mission movie but it takes over an hour to get to the mission and when it comes it is rushed and oafish. It isn’t the ultimate collection of action heroes we were promised either. Most of the big names just takes cameos (the Planet Hollywood reunion with Bruce and Arnie is just one scene) or sit on the sidelines (Rourke.)
And everybody is so fantastically old. Now I know that that is the whole point but there is a shot of Stallone running to jump into a departing seaplane that’s almost painful to watch. It’s like one of those charity football matches where old pros relive past glories. Statham and Li take the roles of the youngster who have to make up numbers and add a bit of energy
Having drafted in a supreme martial artist like Jet Li, Stallone just has him fire machine guns most of the time, because he’d just show them all up if he did anything else. Fair enough, but then the film foists the improbability of having him lose not once, but twice, to Lundgren in a fight, even though Lundgren looks like something that has been put together on a laboratory slab.
With its tale of a group of experienced mercenaries heading off to overthrow a foreign leader, in this case a Latin American dictator, it’s like an a remake of The Wild Geese, the 70s film is which various ageing British acting legends – Burton, Moore, Harris – made themselves look foolish playing soldiers.
They weren’t particularly convincing but at least they could deliver their lines. The dialogue in Expendables is basically: Sly “Muh muh muh,” Dolph, “Mm, Mm, mm,” Mickey, “Muh …, Muh Muhh … muh,” Jason, “Grrrr, Grrr, Grrrr.” And while the average Wild Goose looked tastefully wasted thanks to decades of hard boozing and hard living, the average Expendable's looks have been wrecked by steroids and plastic surgery. Stallone resembles Liza Minnelli’s last husband.
Read Expendables 2 review
Read Expendables 3 review
