Movie Review: 'The Expendables' (2010), Jam-packed with a Who's Who of Superstars and Explosions

"The Expendables" are a group of elite mercenaries for hire led by Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) with former SAS soldier and knife expert, Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), martial artist Yin Yang (Jet Li), sniper Gunnar Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), weapons specialist Hale Caesar (Terry Crews) and demolitions expert Toll Road (Randy Couture).

The movie starts out with a bang in the opening scenes as we see "The Expendables" team takedown a group of Somali pirates that are about to execute a group of hostages. Jensen starts a shootout with the pirates and most of them are taken out within seconds. Yang and Jensen, who don't get along well, argue about hanging one of the pirates and Ross has to break it up, eventually coming to the decision to let Jensen go from their team due to his inability to work with the team, follow orders and some sort of psychological problems.

Ross and his old rival, Trench (Arnold Schwarzenegger), have a meeting with Mr. Church (Bruce Willis) who offers them a mission to take out General Garza (David Zayas), a dictator on an island in the Gulf of Mexico. Trench quickly bows out and Ross gets the contract for his team.

Ross and Christmas meet with their island contact, Sandra (Gisele Itié) to get a look at the layout of the dictator's place of operations. The mission goes badly and the guys barely escape with their lives. The team gets intel that Garza is backed by an ex-CIA agent James Munroe (Eric Roberts), and his henchmen, Paine (Steve Austin) and The Brit (Gary Daniels).

All is not what it seems as the team learns of few extra twists to their mission and who and why they are being paid for the mission. Along the way, the team must battle, not only Garza and Munroe, but also do battle with their ex-teammate, Jensen. It all culminates with a huge explosive attack on Garza's compound.

"The Expendables" is your average action movie with very little plot outside of the miniscule storyline that allows the characters to basically fight and blow things up with explosives, grenades, lots of guns and vehicles. About the only thing that separates this movie from your average action movie is the who's who cast of action heroes and athletes with larger-than-life personas. I have to admit that the superstar cast is probably the only reason I watched this movie.

Don't get me wrong, I do like action movies from time to time and "The Expendables" does fine for a formulaic, no fuss but plenty of action movie.

"The Expendables" is directed and the screenplay is co-written by Sylvester Stallone. It boasts action heroes Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham ("The Transporter"), Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis. For a little bit of real athleticism, there is Randy Couture (UFC champion), Steve Austin (retired pro wrestler) and Gary Daniels (kickboxing champion). For true actors, there is Terry Crews, Mickey Rourke and Eric Roberts. And for actors and actresses of TV fame, there is David Zayas ("Dexter") and Charisma Carpenter ("Angel").

The action, when it occurs, looks pretty good from my point of view. There are a number of people involved with this movie (dare I say actors?) that offer a bit of action oriented notoriety to this movie including, UFC veteran, Randy Couture, retired pro wrestler, Stonecold Steve Austin and kickboxing champion turned actor, Gary Daniels. They are well recognized within their circles which, of course, attracts all of their fans to this movie. Jason Statham, trained in Mixed Martial Arts and Kickboxing, and Jet Li bring their skills to this movie as well.

It's obvious that Stallone was trying to attract many of the fans of each of the headliners to come see this movie. This is not a bad idea but I think that some of the actors and other stars are not used to the best of their potential or thrown in just to get their name in the credits.

One of my gripes about "The Expendables" is that, while there are a ton of action heroes and other popular athletes, many of them are on the scene in cameo roles, very small parts or in parts that bare little relevance to the main story. Schwarzenegger and Willis' scene is so short that you might miss it if you blink!

Stonecold Steve Austin and Gary Daniels are in several scenes that are rather short but a lot more than Schwarzenegger and Willis. Austin's highlight is definitely when he beats up Stallone.

I really do not understand the purpose of Mickey Rourke's character, Tool, who owns a tattoo parlor where the team often hangs out. Tool is an ex-soldier, probably from the Vietnam War, who can no longer fight for the team, if he ever did, and has bad memories of the war. Now he basically creates tattoos all day and fools around with younger women. I thought maybe his character was going to do more in the movie but he didn't which was a letdown for me. It's not like he is too old to take part in the action in this movie -- he starred in "The Wrestler" not that long ago.

I do wish Dolph Lundgren played a real team player for "The Expendables" rather than a slightly crazy loose-cannon who has no qualms about leaving the team and attacking its members for the highest bidder. This made him an interesting character but it was not used properly. He flip flops back-and-forth a bit by alternating between working with the team and against the team. I don't know about you but if I had a teammate like this, I would probably kill him to prevent revenge, definitely not welcome him back again and again!

David Zayas does relatively good as the mediocre dictator General Garza. I just never felt he was a sinister enough to be a realistic dictator. I'm betting that this character was created because they can no longer use Cuba and Fidel Castro without stepping on toes, so I see the island and the general as generic substitutes for Cuba.

The Schwarzenegger/Stallone scene felt a bit awkward or maybe it was just bad writing? As if that would ever happen in an action movie!

The story, as I said before, is your standard action movie plot. It is simple and easy to follow but for some reason this movie added a few twists into the story that left me feeling like I should have been confused when I wasn't -- I can't put my finger on it. It's probably the extra complications added to the story just to get some actors/athletes into some scenes. But, basically, if you can understand G.I. Joe episodes, this is along those lines. With a running time of 103 minutes, I was never really bored but a few scenes, especially with Mickey Rourke, were a bit slow at times.

The side story of Christmas and his ex-girlfriend, Lacy (Charisma Carpenter), whose new boyfriend beats her, giving Christmas a reason to beat him and his friends, is distracting and unnecessary I think. I suppose it does show his character in a slightly different light but I don't think it was necessary. Like I said, this was probably used to create the scene in which Christmas beats up a whole group of guys. It was still good to see Charisma Carpenter again even though her role could have been better and longer.

There are a few small violent scenes and a few really big ones but nothing more than your average action movie. Of course, this was rated R but felt more like PG-13. I can't even recall any really bad language, unless I missed it?

The special effects are mostly comprised of explosions and guns. I really want one of those automatic chain guns with exploding bullets that Caesar uses near the end of the movie -- it reminds me of the gun Sylvester Stallone uses in his last Rambo movie (it rips right through anyone or anything!). I also like the team's airplane with a gunner's cockpit in the nose of the plane and also the way it was able to lay a spray of gasoline down on the enemy before setting it on fire.

The budget was an estimated $80 million and I bet more than half of it went to the actors and stars. Opening weekend sales were $34,825,135 in USA which is not that high but enough to do pretty well for the summer. The gross sales as of September 2010 are $101,020,533 in USA, so I guess it did well and that is before DVD sales.

Conclusion

"The Expendables" is a good action movie and should be taken for what it is. I didn't expect much in the way of story or character development and this movie purposely doesn't try to do any of that. It is still fun to see all of these action stars and actors together in one movie, even if some of them are only in it for cameos, if you are a fan of any of the participating actors or stars and their action roles, give this movie a shot.

Rating: 3/5

Quotes

Gunnar Jensen:

Trench: Well, I'm busy right now. So give this job to my friend here. He loves playing in the jungle, right?
Barney Ross: [sarcastically] Right.
Mr. Church: [Uncertain] That's right.
Trench: [to Barney] Hey, how about dinner?
Barney Ross: Yeah, when?
Trench: In a thousand years?
Barney Ross: Too soon.
[Trench walks off]
Mr. Church: [Confused; about Trench] What's his f-ing problem?
Barney Ross: He wants to be president.

Trench: [from trailer] Only an idiot would do this job.
Barney Ross: How much?
Trench: Like I said.

Hale Caesar: [from trailer] Great, they got a small army. What have we got?
[looks at Yin Yang]
Hale Caesar: Four and a half men.
[Everyone but Yin Yang laughs]
Yin Yang: Not so funny.

Lee Christmas: What's he sayin'?
Hale Caesar: He said we're dead, with an accent!

Yin Yang: Yes, I do! Everything is harder for me. When I'm hurt, wound is bigger, 'cause I'm smaller. When I travel I need to go farther.
Barney Ross: I know, because you're smaller, right?