Sommerleigh Pollonais, Senior Writer
Plot: Armed with every weapon they can get their hands on the Expendables are the world’s last line of defense and the team that gets called when all other options are off the table.
Review: Have you ever had to watch a friend/family member do something that they seemed proud of, but the entire time you’re doing your best not to show on your face how cringe-worthy their performance is? Well, if you have, I think you get where I’m heading with this review.
When the first Expendables movie came out back in 2018, it hit all the right notes for fans of the action genre, especially those who grew up enjoying the over-the-top movies of the 80s. Taking action fans dreams of bringing together the best and beefiest heroes of the era like Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li and Mel Gibson (I’m bunching the first three movies together here so don’t @ me for name dropping those who didn’t appear in the first one) and more modern day action men like Jason Statham, Wesley Snipes and Antonio Banderas made us feel like kids playing with our favourite toys and the movie was a massive hit.
Followed up by another couple of flawed but fun outings, it seemed like they had the formula down: big explosions, lots of guns, fast-paced action sequences (I’ll give the shoddy dialogue a pass here) and The Expendables guaranteed a fun popcorn flick just like the 80’s movies that came before. But with each movie being a little worse than the last the writing was on the wall, and sadly the title isn’t the only terrible thing this movie has to offer.
Kicking off the fourth we have Barney (Stallone) teaming up with Christmas (Statham) as well as Gunner (Lundgren), Toll (Randy Couture) and newcomers Easy Day (50 Cent) and Galan (Jacob Scipio). The team led by Agent Marsh (Andy Garcia) are sent on a mission to stop an arms dealer Rahmat (Iko Uwais from The Raid films) from stealing nuclear detonators. The mission goes badly, Barney is taken out of commission and the rest of the team now including Gina (Megan Fox) and Decha (Tony Jaa from the Ong Bak films) make a desperate play to stop Rahmat as he attempts to detonate the weapon with the hopes of starting World War III.
I don’t want to be too harsh with my review, so I’ll start by saying no one sits down to watch an Expendables movie for the plot. If you paid me a million dollars, I could barely tell you what the premise of the prior three films were. But I could tell you the action sequences were ridiculously fun and the chemistry between the actors, who seemed to be having a great time, more than made up for the weak storytelling.
Sadly, this time around none of those elements made it into this movie, making it feel like the most amateurish outing of the bunch. Stallone is barely on screen (my guess is he smelled this stinker coming from miles away and decided to keep his distance) and it’s left up to Jason Statham and company to keep your interest. As I mentioned earlier, these movies have always been weak in the dialogue department but now throw in weak directing and editing so bad you’re either struggling to tell who’s hitting who or the scene goes by so quickly you barely have time to decide whether it looked good or not, and all you’re left with is a movie that should’ve gone straight to the nearest streaming platform.
It’s a shame really because this one had two of the best martial artists (Tony Jaa and Iko Uwais) at its disposal and never truly gave them the opportunity to shine. If I’m remembering right, I don’t think we even got to see them square off against each other, which might just be the biggest flaw in this film. But even when they did show off their impressive skills (Statham too) the terrible editing would just ruin things anyways.
And I want it painted black
No colors anymore
I want them to turn black
“Well, that was just sad” were the first words out of my mouth as I left the cinema. This movie was laughably bad on almost all fronts. From the lazy acting (c’mon Megan Fox, I know you can do better than that) to the terrible action sequences and let’s not forget the awful AWFUL green screen that had me wondering what exactly was the budget for this movie, Expend4bles might just be the nail in the coffin of this “franchise.” And I wouldn’t be surprised to see the next one (if there is a next one) heading straight to your nearest streaming service.
Sommer’s Score: 4 out of 10
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Sommerleigh of the House Pollonais. First of Her Name. Sushi Lover, Queen of Horror Movies, Comic Books and Binge-Watching Netflix. Mother of two beautiful black cats named Vader and Kylo. I think eating Popcorn at the movies should be mandatory, PS4 makes the best games ever, and I’ll be talking about movies until the zombie apocalypse comes. Double Tap Baby! Read More