Movie Review - The Expendables (2010)

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The Expendables: It’s A Guy Thing!

Rating: 3 out of 5*

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Mickey Rourke, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Steve Austin, Eric Roberts, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger

Director: Sylvester Stallone

August 13, 2010 (Sampurn Wire): A movie that has Sylvester Stallone is expected to be big. And when you have Jason Statham with him, you expect it to be big on action. However, The Expendables does score big on action but fails to serve a good enough plot.

Barney Ross played by Sylvester Stallone leads a group of mercenaries which does clean up jobs for the rich and powerful. This time around their job is to over throw a ruthless dictator and set free a country which comprises of few thousand people. But once the mission begins, they discover a plot far more sinister than they were led to believe. Each member of the group is supposed to be skilled in his trade but the director (again Stallone) doesn’t care to divulge into the details. An half-hearted attempt is made to venture into the private lives of a few characters. The movie mainly revolves around Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) and Lee Christmas (Jason Statham) while the other characters are hardly given anything more than a fill up job.

The plot of the movie is simple and straight, and can surely cater to the audience who are suffering from the post-‘Inception’ confusion. The good thing about the movie is its high octane, bone crunching and blood soaked action sequences which go on for a long long time. And this is where we finally see the fringe characters getting some screen space. Sylvester Stallone and Jason Statham manage to pull out really funny one-liners. Unexpectedly the movie is funny and funny dialogues coupled with Stallone’s accent are rib-tickling at times. Jason Statham seems to have taken off from where he left off in ‘The Transporter’ and ‘Crank’ series and does a good job.

There are a few occasions where 5 men take on few hundred men and still manage to escape without a bruise. But we can forgive Stallone (as a director) as he delivers action scenes which are a treat to watch. The movie is also garnished with guest appearances of yesteryears action stars – Arnold and Bruce Willis especially.

After watching the movie you end up with a feeling that you have seen this kind of a movie many times before as it lacks anything new and is poorly written. It is nothing more than a fast paced, loud action movie and is devoid of any efforts being taken to work on the story. Watch this for Stallone and Statham but we know we have seen better from them. On the whole it’s a guy thing.

– Rohan Sawant / Sampurn Wire