Sylvester Stallone’s big action movie The Expendables gives the term star vehicle a whole new meaning. Major roles are taken by Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke and Stallone himself, and there are cameos by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis. Heavyweight boxing champion and MMA (mixed martial arts) specialist Randy Couture, WWF (World Wrestling Federation) star Stone Cold Steve Austin, and other muscular athletes-turned-entertainers are also present. It is a happy get-together of musclemen, who settle down to kick some butt and have some fun.
According to Celebrity Mania, a Hollywood news Web site, Stallone said many of these big names waived their customary fees to come along to this party. Stallone had gone out of his way to bring on as many action heroes as possible, but the Web site said that he was snubbed by the likes of Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme. There is more than enough muscle on display as there is, though much of it is definitely past is prime.
The story, what there is of it, centers on a group of mercenaries who call themselves The Expendables. They engage in missions around the world, bringing down bad guys though a combination of overwhelming firepower and exotic martial arts moves. Even at the moments of greatest danger, these hardened professionals can spare a moment for a bit of light banter. They get involved in a mission to take down a South American general who is running drugs under the direction of a rouge CIA operative (Eric Roberts). Suffice to say that this conflict leads to back-to-back car chases, fire fights, brutal martial arts encounters and huge explosions. The film is neither as clever nor as funny as it thinks it is, and it bombards the audience with a hokey mix of philosophizing about violence (mostly from Mickey Rourke’s character), and huge delight in portraying it for our delectation.
There is a good deal of violence, some of it quite horrific, including a scene in which romantic interest Giselle Itie undergoes waterboarding and the inflicting of some very nasty knife wounds. It is clearly all meant to be in good fun, but sometimes it verges on the offensively gratuitous.
One of the peculiarities of The Expendables is that it doesn’t need to bother with creating its characters, for almost all the action heroes in the film draw, to a greater or lesser extent, on an already established screen persona. For fans of action films, this gives the movie an illusion of greater substance than it actually has, with its host of jocular references to a combined body of work that is truly vast. The use of action stars, as stars, rather than as characters, is most blatant with the Schwarzenegger cameo, which is introduced simply for the wow of recognition and a single one-liner. Schwarzenegger has moved on from the action hero community, but The Expendables is a friendly gathering where old alumni are welcomed back for a session of back slapping and reminiscing about glory days.
In a bit of inter-generational hero-bonding, Lee Christmas (Statham) ribs Stallone’s character for no longer being as fast as he used to be, and Sly lets it wash off in the way only a big star can. Jet Li is at the center of another bit of humor, based largely on his relatively small size (compared with the likes of Dolph Lundgren), but when the joke runs out of steam, it is simply dropped, one of many dangling loose ends in this shaggy dog of a film. The Expendables revisits memories of past action flicks and has much of the appeal of a bumper issue of some action star fan-zine. Not too serious, not too good, but with plenty of familiar faces and the occasional joke that can raise a smile. The film itself is certainly expendable, not to say disposable, but this hasn’t stopped talk of a sequel.
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