Archive for August, 2010

I was looking forward to seeing this film immensely, and even managed to get an evening pass on the first day of release. I also managed to see it for free and get a free ticket for another film thanks to the projectionist starting the film early, but that’s another tale.

The tale of The Expendables goes as follows (well, from what I saw from about 10 minutes in): Sylvester Stallone leads a small group of (highly capable) mercenaries consisting of himself, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li, Terry Crewes and Randy Couture. Sly is hired by a “friend” (after beating out another “friend” to the job) to go and take out another 80s star, Eric Roberts, who is running some scam on the (fictitious?) island of Vilena with the help of a corrupt general and Steve Austin (the MMA guy, not The Six Million Dollar man).

The first recon with Sly and Statham (who meet their contact there) goes very bad and they just about make it out, after stopping off for some serious aerial payback. Their contact refuses to go with them and goes into hiding, whilst Sly and Statham return.

After a bit of character development from Statham (basically him kicking the poop out of a guy who hit his ex-girlfriend), Sly chats to Mickey Rourke (who is very, very good in his small screen time) and decides to go back for the girl alone and probably kill Eric Roberts as well. He’s interrupted by a traitorious attempt on his life, but manages to get out of it with the aid of Jet Li, conveniently along for the ride – some humorous dialogue is exchanged during the chase, very funny.

Anyway, long story short, Sly is met at the plane by (almost) everyone on his team, they go back, and pretty much all hell breaks loose for the last 15 minutes of the film. The action is fast, frenetic, bloody (more on that later), there’s a machine shotgun, knife fights, mano-a-mano fisticuffs, almost everything you can conceive of in an 80s action film. I won’t spoil the ending as it pretty much writes itself, but there is a pleasant surprise at the end that I was pleased with.

But why only 8 / 10? Well, it’s very much Sly’s film (which is fine), but even then there didn’t seem to be lot of him or any of the other actors on screen for long. I suppose with that many big names (still), it’s hard to fit them all in. The chap who played the general (David Zayas) did a very good job, I really felt for his character and the dilemma he was in.

The fight scene between Jet Li and someone else was, unfortunately, choppily edited which is par for the course these days. However, later in the film when all hell is unleashed, the action is framed much better and there are some stand-out “wow” moments, e.g. Jason Statham’s two-shot to a soldier’s foot then face, and Sly’s extremely rapid reload-and-fire technique, which I can only assume he’s trained for.

One thing that really, really put me off was the CGI blood. Very badly done, too red, too comic book. The blood effects in the recent Rambo film were far more convincing, but maybe they hard to “cartoon it up” a bit for a 15 rating. That said, when the machine shotgun is doing it’s work, it’s awesome.

Overall, more than good film, definitely worth a watch. I personally don’t see it as throwback to the cheesy 80s action movies (Tango and Cash, anyone?) but rather a non-cheesy action movie in its own right.

Incidentally, the rather excellent UK martial artist Gary Daniels is also in it, whilst (again) he doesn’t get much screen time, he has a great fight at the end with Jet Li and a rather nasty end