The Expendables
Review
by Anthony Morris
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The Expendables
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Every now and again Hollywood tries to find out if one long-dead
genre or another is ripe for a revival. They keep trying with westerns,
the teen sex romp occasionally gets a push, and now we have The Expendables.
The Expendables
sees director and star Sylvester Stallone assemble a cast mixing old
1980s action stars (Dolph Lungren, a cameo from Arnold Schwarzenegger
that is easily the best moment in the film) with the current crop of
action stars (Jason Statham, Jet Li) and a whole lot of wrestlers / UFC
fighters ("Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Randy Couture) and then throws
them into a story best described as "let's remake Commando, only with five good guys instead of one".
In case you don't remember Commando – and if you don't, why would you be watching The Expendables
– the basic concept is that a shady CIA type (a cameo from Bruce
Willis) hires Stallone's band of mercenaries to take back a small
island from Eric Roberts, who is using it to grow drugs. By
all the rules of normal film-making this is a bit of a mess : just
about every character gets zero character development, the plot stops
and starts a couple of times before getting to the final island
beat-down, Mickey Rourke (of all people) supposedly provides the films
"emotional heart" with a deathly-dull anecdote about how he lost his
soul (doesn't seem to stop him picking up trashy women though) and the
whole thing is seemingly set on a version of Earth where steroids occur
naturally in the water. However, once everything starts exploding none of that really matters.
The
action is suitably over-the-top and ridiculous CGI-blood flies
everywhere, bad guys occasionally explode, and all the main villains
die twice (you know the kind of thing – one's shot then stabbed,
another is shot then dropped from a great height, a third is set on
fire then set on even more fire, and so on), so there's that to enjoy
too.
In the end The Expendables
is no-one's idea of a classic, and by today's action standards it's a
flabby mess. But with everything else 80s wise coming back in style,
maybe it's time for 80s-era over-muscled action to make a comeback too. 3 out
of 5
The Expendables
Australian release: 12th August,
2010
Official
Site: The Expendables
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Terry Crews, Randy
Couture, Dolph Lundgren, Giselle Itie, Eric Roberts, David Zayas, Steve Austin
Director: Sylvester Stallone
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