The Expendables was probably one of my bigger disappointments of last summer. The previews had made it look like it might be a fun, action flick with a wink and not taking itself too seriously. And after seeing the A Team,which I thoroughly enjoyed for its comedic tone and enjoyable action, I was hoping for something similar with this. Damn was I disappointed.
The cats for this movie was like an old school action junkies wet dream, Stallone, Dolph Lundgren,Jet Li,Stone Cold Steve Austin, Bruce Willis,Ahnold, Jason Statham, and Mickey Rourke,and Eric Roberts being all Eric Robertsy (Gotta love when he goes all Eric Robertsy).....if done right this could have been a blast.Unfortunately its done for the most part very seriously and its written and acted like its straight out of 1985. And that's unfortunate.
See,until "Die Hard" came out in 88' most action flicks had turned into basically all the same generic crap....our hero is this unstoppable dude who goes to some made up country (with a ridiculously bad name,with a bad generic usually Hispanic character actor as some hokey "EVIL" dictator), said hero meets within the first 5 minutes of being in the country some ridiculously hot chick who's either leading a revolution against said dictator,or just out for revenge for said dictator killing her family or her dog or something. Then you'd get an hour of explosions, the hero sneaking up behind some non descript soldiers who would just be deaf as hell and always looking the opposite direction just waiting to either have their throat slashed,or neck broken,without getting one shot off or making any noise what so ever. Then big fight with the dictators roided up main guy,kill that dude,have a final stand off with the dictator holding the awesomely hot chick at gunpoint (usually with fire and or explosions all around),kill the dictator,hold the awesomely bosomy chick who now is crying in our hero's arms.....a little prologue where our hero says good by to hot chick and flys off into the sunset.The End.
That's pretty much every action movie from 1983 to 1987....and man were there a shit load of them.Then along came "Die Hard" and that changed things up (At least for a while) with a normal guy trying to handle an extraordinary circumstance against a very cool bad guy (Rickman Rules!!!). Of course after that movie the studios did what they do to everything and ran that kinda flick into the ground,and eventually for the most part action flicks kinda went the way of the DTV and late night cable.
Jason Statham still is making action flicks kinda along these lines,but a lot of them are on the cartoony side and don't take themselves seriously,and once every few years theres a new Fast and the Furious (Whenever the studio and the actors need cash),but you just haven't seen a ton of very memorable action flicks in years.
That seems to be changing a little as now,with this new breed of action flick kinda bringing the popcorn movie fun action of yesteryear's flicks along with a good bit of humor and some entertaining villains,and usually they are never what I just described a few paragraphs ago. Well that is except "The Expendables".
This movie is pretty much every cliche from every bad 80's action movie all rolled into one big boring overly long piece of crap. The actors for the most part are just there.I mean Jet Li seems like he's annoyed that he even has to do any of his action scenes,Stallone is Stallone,Statham is the usual likable chap,but it just seems like everyone is phoning it in.I mean for crying out loud you have Mickey FUCKING Rourke in the damn film and he has absolutely nothing to do in the damn film,except fucking act like he's putting a tattoo on someone and smoking a fucking pipe. Just lame. You know your in trouble when the guy obviously that gets "it" and is just having a blast with his role is Lundgren (who has been relegated to DTV excrement for the last 20 yrs and its obvious he is giving relishing actually being in a movies that's on a big screen,and I'm not talking about a 60 inch plasma) your in trouble.
Hell this movie got to the point when I was sitting there looking at my watch wishing that they'd bring the Dolph back to liven things up (and let me know when that's ever happened to you) and this was after having about 5 beers before the movie and seeing it in the middle of the day. This movie should have had me sitting there with a smile on my face enjoying the shit out of it,but instead I was sitting there wondering if I should have seen "Eat,Fucking Pray,and God Shoot Me Love" instead.......not really,but hopefully you know what I mean.Just a big dull disappointment.
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