Screenplay by Dave Callaham and Sylvester Stallone
Story by Dave Callaham
Directed by Sylvester Stallone
“What happened to you?”
“I got my ass kicked.”
The Expendables can be sliced, like a pie, into three enormous pieces.
- The first third is made of 100% processed cheese. There is dialogue uttered in this movie that would never, in a million years, come out of the mouths of live human beings, least of all hard-nosed mercenaries, ex-CIA operatives, and generalissimos from the southern hemisphere. The best actors in the film struggle enormously with it, and the non-actors (especially poor Randy Couture) look like animated plastic mannequins when they’re forced to speak, instead of fight. As for the plot…good lord, is there really ANY point in trying to make it seem as something other than someone scribbling on the back of a napkin? If there is anything that screams 1980s director-to-VHS-classic, it IS the storyline. Speaking of contrived, the less said about the extra-cheesy Schwarzenegger/Willis cameo, the better.
The second third is made up of the action, and that IS why we are all here. People die in spectacularly bloody ways, mercenaries get their martial arts/street fighting grooves in gear, ex-wrestlers actually adapt to the situation rather well, and buildings blow up in extraordinary ways. There is virtually no CGI in the film, which means that, as an exercise in old school fight-and-destroy, it does a superb job. There is an air strike on a pier that actually made me hold my breath in anticipation, and much of the fighting is a great deal more satisfying to watch for being so completely grubby and brutal. To top it all off, Sylvester Stallone actually gets trounced by an opponent at one point, and ends up acknowledging his age-related limitations with some surprising (and humourous) realism. In every way, this film channels the type of blockbusters people were renting (my family included) at the video store, some time around 1988.
The final third of the film is surprising, because it’s made up of a series of tiny little scenes that actors enjoy…which is always good news for the overly-stimulated audience. The dialogue is minimal, the direction is solid, and the audience gets some surprising insight into certain characters that, by rights, it shouldn’t expect from such a film. For a prime example of this, observe Mickey Rourke’s two major scenes in the film. He is relaxed, cheeky, melancholy, and carries a quiet sadness…light years away from his wasted effort in Iron Man 2. Sometimes, a script needs to be tailored to a certain actor, and Sly Stallone’s script serves Rourke well. Meanwhile, Jason Statham (the best actor in the film…and criminally underrated in general) gets some nice male-bonding scenes with Stallone that require limited conversation and a great deal of buddy-buddy silence that works wonderfully. Mind you, these scenes are scattered throughout the film, so enjoy them when you can…in between mass shoot outs.
It’s a chop-em-up, shoot-em-up, retro action flick designed to do nothing more than tickle your adrenal gland…and it does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s not bad enough to win any Razzie awards, but it’s never going to rise above the status of “guilty pleasure”. Frankly, I only have one complaint: Charisma Carpenter. Once a goddess of an actress, wowing audiences for four years on Angel, has been reduced to playing this film’s token, abused ex-girlfriend…something that her superbly written & performed Buffy/Angel character of Cordelia Chase would have NEVER accepted or tolerated! This tokenization of the actress (and her disappointing acceptance of such a role), knocks another point off the film, and so it ends up with a rating of…
4
