I unearthed this review of the first Expendables movie from my Facebook page before I started this blog. Seems fitting yo post this now that the third movie is coming. My take on Sly Stallone’s action packed The Expendables, ladies and gents 😀

Fans of action are guaranteed to love this flick. One: because of the general testosterone overload. Two: because of the lineup of iconic action superstars, both past and present. Three: because of the pure kick-ass-ness of the entire movie. Name it, they have it —  hand to hand combat, blades, explosives — the works. The story is a no brainer — very typical in fact — a gang of mercenaries (Stallone, Statham, Li, Couture, Crews) were hired by the CIA to take down a military junta in the small island of Vilena, which is being used as the manufacturing and transshipment point of of an illegal drug syndicate financed and headed by the villanous Eric Roberts, who, himself was a CIA agent gone rogue. The payout was $5 million. Stallone and Staham scout the area, discover that the mission was too dangerous, and opted out of the job. Some complications arise and they end up taking on the job anyways, and this, is basically where the non-stop action begins.

I have to hand it to Stallone. I loved the last Rocky and Rambo (both directed and penned by him) because it portrayed the characters as humans, who go through life just like the rest of us. They had personal sh*t to deal with, just like any other guy. The same formula was used in The Expendables, but only, it was more complicated because of the amount of big names who signed up for the movie.

What I liked best about the movie was the humor and good-naturedness of each of the characters. They poked fun at each other and their own weaknesses like a typical group of friends having beer on a Friday night while watching a sports event. They didn’t take themselves too seriously, and obviously had fun doing the movie. Unlike in their own personal starrers, they took hits in the action scenes, as well as dished out beatings of their own. Reminiscent of The Forbidden Kingdom where Jackie Chan and Jet Li shared billing, Stallone managed to balance the screen time among all of his characters, without it seeming forced. The transitions between the scenes and the focus were good.

Stallone managed to stand out as the leader of the pack but did not hog the limelight to himself. He gave each character their own moments to shine. And because of the variety of action scenes and stunts, each character was able to excel in their fight scenes, which were very well choreographed and executed, by the way. There were elements of wrestling, mixed martial arts (Stallone used an armbar on one of the goons), Couture even mixed up his routine by doing a wall climb and superman punch. Steve Austin kicked Stallone’s ass. Statham, well, he’s an all around ass kicker for sure, but unlike in previous movies, he was not a car expert on this one, but rather, an expert in blades and the like. Terry Crews (Latrell in the The White Chicks), who was a professional football player in real life was able to show off his quarterback skills by throwing a ginormous missile across fire to take down a chopper, but Jet Li is the cutest among them all, with the dialogue emphasizing how small he is as compared to the other guys on his team. He just went along with the movie-long prank and did his awesome martial arts moves flawlessly against Dolph Lundgren. He, in turn, was beaten up just to even the score but the scene was equal parts entertaining and amazing. Mickey Rourke added to the mix by bringing in the drama factor leading to the turning point of the film, while Bruce Willis and Arnie lent more starpower to the flick by delivering dialogue loaded with punchlines and zingers in reference to their real life and their former movie characters.

All in all, the movie was not the greatest because of some lull in the middle part of the film while Stallone was laying out the story, but the action scenes and the fun script made it one of the good action movies that I will remember for a very long time. Statham said in one of his dialogues. “You Should have waited, I was worth it”…. Well, they were worth it indeed and I’m glad I did wait to see this on the big screen.