A Reel Review: EXPEND4BLES

For THE EXPENDABLES franchise, there was an idea…to bring together classic action stars from the 1980’s with names such as Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Norris, Gibson, and Van Damme on the big screen to recapture the glory of that shoot-em-up era that made them famous. The first problem they had was getting everyone on stage at the same time, so they did a hack-job of editing to try and make it look like they were. The second problem was the screen-time of those action legends was sacrificed for young no-names that no one cared about. For the fourth and final (ha), film, EXPEND4BLES, they don’t even bother with that idea in the first place. 

The Expendables team, led by Barney (Sylvester Stallone), and Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), are sent to Libya to keep mercenary Rahmat (Iko Uwais), from stealing a nuclear bomb. When the mission goes badly and one of the team-members is killed, the splintered team gets a new leader (Megan Fox), and heads out to sea to try again. 

Directed by Scott Waugh, EXPEND4BLES plays out as a generic action film with the most basic plot and the most basic characters. After a disastrous mission in Libya, the reassembled team moves on without Christmas, who decides to tail the team anyway. The mission leads them to a cargo ship in the China Sea which is carrying the nuke headed for Russia…ready to detonate and start WWIII. The film clicks on every action-film trope there ever was: world-wide threat, tough-guys, sexy girls, lots of guns and explosions, and tough-talk. There is nothing new here with no effort to make things feel fresh. 

The cliches just keep on coming. Loud motorcycles, check. Noisy bar fight, check. Guy with a toothpick, check. Sunglasses in the middle of the night, check. The film is following a template and nothing more. Once the action starts things are dull and un-inspired, the CGI is horrible, the green-screen scenes un-convincing (got to love the scenes out on the fake ocean where no one’s hair moves in the wind), and the dialogue right out of a stockpile. 

Acting is all over the place. Sylvester Stallone has limited screen-time and he amounts to an extended cameo. His absence makes it a Jason Statham show, and although he carries the film fine, it’s the same-old, same-old from him. Megan Fox and her partner Levy Tran nearly steal the show, but their outfits (tight butts, crop-tops with plenty of cleavage), make them look like they’re headed out clubbing instead of a combat mission. Andy Garcia shows up as a CIA operative and just grunts his way around. Dolph Lundgren is getting harder and harder to understand. Iko Uwais takes the prize for the most boring bad guy of all time. 

The last act has two attempted twists, both of which can be seen coming from miles away…with one of them doing disservice to an early setback with a character. The old idea for THE EXPENDABLES is thrown out here, as there are only a meager handful of 1980’s action legends who bother to show up. That may have been forgivable if there was an actual movie built around the cast we did get. This is bargain-bin crap and the final nail in a franchise that never came within a whiff of its grand idea. 

BOTTOM LINE: Fuck it