The Expendables

There is something to be said for Stallone. The man is crazy over the hill, yet every few years he manages to make a movie the way he wants to make it and finds a way to make money doing. First we got a new Rocky, then came a new Rambo and now it is The Expendables. Stallone writes and directs these movies, finds a way to finance them for reasonably cheap and sits back and watches the money come in. He has found a way to remain relevant in the movie industry, like the male action version of Meryl Streep, he gets better with age. For The Expendables, he set out to make an action movie that would be more at place in the 1980s but with 2010 sensibilities. His dream was to gather a bunch of stars of action movies past and unleash them in the ultimate action movie. He was not fully able to get the cast he wanted, but he did gather quite an action ensemble. He loaded the movie with a wrestler, a UFC fighter, washed up action stars, action stars in their prime and his Planet Hollywood brethren, Bruce Willis and our Governor here in CA. All of this was enough to get me excited, but when the trailers were rolled out, it just made me that much more excited.

The Expendables are a group of 6 for-hire mercenaries who do the jobs no one else has the stomach for. They go into the dark corners of the world and do that dirt. They are excellent marksmen, hand to hand combat fighters, knife experts and they know how to plan to get in and out without making too big of a scene. On one mission however, one member, Gunner(Dolph Lundgren), loses his mind and he is no longer able to be on the team. So the team is down to five when they are offered another job by Tool(Mickey Rourke). Barney(Stallone) and Lee(Jason Statham) go down to scope out the new job, but the job looks impossible and they are not going to do it until Barney meets Sandra and is taken by her resolve. The job is to take out an evil dictator, and perhaps take out the man bankrolling the hostile takeover, James Munroe(Eric Roberts). With his 5 man team, Barney must find a way to get his team out alive, save the girl and kill the bad guys.

Serving up action of every variety and showing a surprising lack of vanity, Stallone manages to give every action fan everything he could want in one movie. Jason Statham beats the crap out of a group of guys, throws knives and wields a sword. Jet Li and Dolph Lundgren have this epic, kick ass fight, Stallone gets his ass kicked by Stone Cold Steve Austin, Randy Couture and Austin get this bloodied fight. There is this stunning boat dock explosion and the climatic castle explosion is totally sick. Stallone finds the perfect balance of action styles, while still maintaining that gruesome graphic violence that helped make him a star in the first place. You could call The Expendables, Rambo with a team. Body parts fly as bullets pierce them, heads roll from swords, we see bodies explode, hear blood curdling screams when Terry Crews takes a loud, testosterone birthed rifle and shoots people with bullets that seem to pierce all matter.

There is this side plot involving Statham's character that could probably have been done away with and saved about 10 minutes, but the idea was to humanize these characters, but I do not want them humanized. While I know at any moment these characters could meet their ultimate demise, I also know it could never happen. Stallone comes from the 1980s action movies where heroes were superheroes without masks and powers. He was a one man army bringing down entire empires and with a team of like minded individuals in this movie, I know deep down, the men are never really in any trouble. The car chase is cool, but it is made cooler by going directly from the car chase into a fight between Dolph and Jet. This is how these movies operate. We go from action scene to action scene and when the movie gets to climatic battle, we get an orgy of orgasmic action. A tank explodes at one point and a helicopter explodes after Terry Crews hurls a missile in the air while Stallone shoots at it exploding it in midair. More people are stabbed, shot, punched, kicked, thrown into brick walls and at one point a guy is shot and stabbed at the same time.

You know what you are in for when you go watch a movie that stars all of these people. You do not expect great acting, although Eric Roberts is the perfect villain and Mickey Rourke delivers a stirring monologue that sounded like it was from a completely different movie, but The Expendables works on every level. It works as a story about a group of men unsure of their place, which is a metaphor for Stallone and how he fits into Hollywood. He is a man left for dead years ago, but here he is with the number 1 movie two weekends in a row and this movie may save an entire studio, Lions Gate, from a hostile takeover. He has found a place doing the kind of movies he wants to do and it has to be respected. His movies will never be for everyone and to be honest, I could not stand most of the movies he made in the late 1990s, but this movie, along with Rambo, have made me appreciate the kind of man Stallone is and the kind of movies he makes. Make no mistake, The Expendables is a gory, gritty, borderline disgusting action movie, but thank god for it!

Final Grade: B