The first Expendables, in many ways, was a cast list in search of a story as a horde of classic action heroes jostled for space on an admittedly impressive looking poster that features just as much exuberant airbrushing than it did sweaty muscles and grizzled sneers. The movie itself was a poorly constructed, 80s worshiping wet dream that somehow managed to compensate for a plot that literally felt like it was being made up on the fly with some legitimately bone crunching action. Sequels naturally followed that added such legends as Jean Claude Van Damme, Chuck Norris, Wesley Snipes and… Kelsey Grammer for some reason, but when we got to the third installment, the team of daring duffers finally ran into a foe they finally couldn’t defeat – a PG-13 rating – and it seemed like the Expendables had finally been retired for good. However, it’s notoriously difficult to keep a good action hero down, let alone a bunch, so nearly a decade later the gang has strapped up their knees and rubbed Deep Heat on their lower backs as they hurl themselves into the fray one more time.
But after such a long time out, can the boys stop the franchise from becoming expendable itself?
While on their latest mission, the mismatched, bickering, beret wearing band of mercenaries known as the Expendables find themselves in Lybia, shooting every thing that moves in order to stop Rahmat, a psycho with spiked nightsticks and highly educated feet, from making off with a bunch of nuclear warheads for a mysterious buyer known only as Ocelot. However, after the mission goes south (don’t they always?), and team leader, Barney Ross, finds himself in a spot of bother, his second in command, the constantly growing Lee Christmas, blows the mission by choosing his buddy instead of taking out the bad guys and as a result, finds himself on the outs from his buddies.
What’s even more awkward, is that in the wake of the failed mission, Christmas’ girlfriend, Gina, has been named by the Expendables’ CIA handler, Marsh, to be the new leader of the team which makes their already tempestuous relationship experience more turbulence than a glider in a hurricane. However, while the team sets out to bring down Rahmat, Christmas elects to get there before them and does so by seeking out one of Barney’s old teammates in the form of the pacifist Decha, who has renounced violence, although the fact that he’s played by talented Thai fighter Tony Jaa suggests he’ll renounce that mindset incredibly soon.
While the main team find themselves imprisoned by Rahmat on a tanker that rigged to blow and start World War Three, Christmas is about to come early and attempt to save the day with all the blazing gunfire and twirling knives you’d expect from a dude played by Jason Statham, but who the fuck is Ocelot’s real identity – and should we really care, because I’m not sure that the screenwriters did…
I’m currently in two minds as to which is the more confusing: the first is how the hell you’re supposed to pronounce Expend4bles on the first place (Expendfourbles?), but the second is that why would anyone try and resurrect a franchise about aging action heroes nine years after the last instalment – I mean, these guys weren’t exactly spring chickens then, y’know? As a result, Statham is drafted in to take the lead if this entry, while Sylevester Stallone chooses to step more into the background here much like he did with his baton handing duties in the Creed movies.
However, unlike the Creed movies, Expend4bles proves to be sloppily written and flatly directed to the point that at times I was genuinely wondering how this could get a cinematic release and a movie like Prey had to settle for streaming. Now, a shit plot is hardly a roadblock for the average, generic actioner, after all, the plot of Commando could fit on a napkin withbroom to spare and that movie is motherfuckin’ camp perfection, but the major gap in the film’s kevlar is that it commits a mortal sin that no slice of boom boom cinema can bounce back from – it’s friggin’ boring.
Director Scott Waugh (also responsible for the similarly drab Need For Speed) keeps things looking colourful, but the pace of the film proves to be suprisingly laborious despite all the frequent explosions of fire and gore that spray all over the place, but for the most part, it’s all substandard kind of stuff as it breaks out the usual beats. Statham’s Christmas bashes in more faces with his beloved brass knuckles while having more domestics with his girlfriend (a bizarrely out of place Megam Fox whose character seems to head into battle with a full face of make-up), Stallone does the usual mentor thing, Lundgren continues being weird (his wig subplot is literally forgotten about three minutes after its started) and Randy Couture continues to bang on about his cauliflower ear. However, all this stuff was never that memorable to start with, so all the numerous call backs crash and burn with more regularity that any of the numerous exploding vehicles the film employs.
Making matters more dull is that all the new recruits barely make a single dent between them: Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson barely manages a single facial expression for the entire movie, Andy Garcia attacks his CIA role like he’s doing a voice over for an animated movie, Jacob Scipio finds himself afflicted with a serious case of verbal diarea by playing the son of Antonio Banderas’ garrulous character from part 3 and Tony Jaa finds himself chronically underused once again in an American action movie. It’s all quite depressing really and things get even worse when the majority of the action sequences are marred by CGI so bad, it starts to resemble a goddamn cartoon as the characters aimlessly deliver endless, lifeless banter that concerns such delightful topics as golden showers, genital warts and penis size.
However, in the very narrow plus column, Iko Uwais delivers solid villainy with his amusingly impractical signature weapons and some of the action sequences set during the extended, ship-based climax temporarily spark the film into life (a motorcycle chase that roars through the lower decks is particularly fun), but compared to the operatic excesses of John Wick 4 or the absurdly epic stylings of the latest Mission: Impossible, this just seems as old and tired as a third of its cast. Expend4bles is cr4p to the power of four.
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