When anyone sees the line up with the likes of Sylvester Stallone (Rambo), Jason Statham (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels), Jet Li (Hero) and Dolph Lundgren (Rocky IV) all in one film, we expect nothing short of an epic film filled with the action heroes of our childhood. Unfortunately, seeing that The Expendables is Stallone’s film, the lone action hero, he can’t help but hog all of the spotlight leaving the other greats we all anticipated watching in the dark.
The Expendables is about an elite group of mercenaries who takes on a job to overthrow a brutal dictator on a foreign island and in order to infiltrate the island to reach their target, they must take on a small army. During their mission, the team leader Barney Ross (Stallone) meets a woman named Sandra and decides take it upon himself to try to free her from the horrors she faces each day.
With an all-star veteran action cast behind him, Stallone had the tools to make a great action film, however it turned out to be another Rambo movie with a group of badasses tagging along behind him. Stallone gives himself a significant amount of screen time leaving the rest with little to contribute. Jason Statham was granted a pointless side arc that involved a love-interest but that goes nowhere, he doesn’t even get the girl at the end. Jet Li was given his 5 minutes of screen time with a pretty entertaining fight with Dolph Lundgren and rest of it was just filled with over the top explosions and gunfire.
The film was overall pretty disappointing simply because I expected much more from it. As open minded and one dimensional as I expected it to be, it didn’t even deliver in that aspect of things. Bruce Willis (Die Hard) and Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Terminator) should’ve really been kept in the dark in the trailers, the crowd would’ve gone wild for it for their very brief cameos but unfortunately, Stallone decidedly showed his hand and caused us to expect more of a role than the 30 seconds of screen time that they did get. I’ll forgive the film for its thin, Rambo-like plot and the cliché action film lines, but falling short in the action element in a film with such promise is simply unforgivable.
I doubt Sly’s learned his lesson for the sequel but it will certainly continue to rake in the money at the box office because there are still many of the world’s men who still haven’t fulfilled their duty as men to sit through this film although the franchise should be renamed to “Team Stallone 2.”
FYI: Jean-Claude Van Damme (Blood Sport) was in fact offered a role in the film, but quickly rejected it because he wanted a more prominent role aside from a henchman who loses a fight to Jet Li. After watching the fight that he would’ve been involved in, I might’ve turned it down too..because BOY does he lose.
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