While I could compare The Expendables to Predators, I'm not going to for one simple reason: The Expendables isn't a sequel. It isn't a remake. It's not even necessarily an homage to the bygone era of 80s "machismo" films. It is a type of action movie that isn't necessarily made anymore, mostly because studios don't generally think audiences want an action movie that isn't dripping with irony or swimming in Looney Tunes physics. The Expendables is shamelessly "old school" while feeling essentially timeless. This movie - save for one joke make at Arnold Schwarzenegger's expense - could take place just about any time.Normally speaking, you know that I don't go easy on movies that adhere to a formula without some kind of fresh take, and while Sylvester Stallone's The Expendables doesn't do anything new (at all) with the "action movie" formula, Sly came up with a better way of keeping things exciting: including as many of the biggest names from various "guy" arenas as he could in one movie.
Action movies generally fall into one of two categories: "men on a mission" (typified in something like The Dirty Dozen or Predator) or the "one man killing force" (Commando, Die Hard, They Live, Escape from New York). Occasionally, there's such a thing as the "team up" variant, usually a variation on the "buddy cop" Lethal Weapon / 48 Hours formula (The Last Boy Scout is a good example, or to a degree Universal Soldier), but The Expendables does something a little different. It's a hybrid of the first two, taking the "men on a mission" frame but granting every main character the indestructibility of a "one man killing force." In that regard, The Expendables is a total misnomer for this movie; despite the fact that that's the name of the team, (SPOILER) every single character introduced in the "pirate" sequence lives to the end of the movie.
So yes, you could (and should) call this movie The Indestructables, but it doesn't really matter. The appeal of The Expendables is seeing a movie that joins Sylvester Stallone with Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, former UFC light heavyweight champion Randy Couture, Terry Crews, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Eric Roberts, Gary Daniels, and Mickey Rourke. Oh yeah, and then there's that scene with Sly, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
That's the core of the cast, filled out with Dexter's David Zayas as General Garza, the leader of a fictitious South American country (and puppet of Eric Roberts' ex-CIA agent Munroe), Giselle Itié as Garza's daughter, who helps The Expendables get into Vilena, and Angel's Charisma Carpenter as a love interest for Lee Christmas (Statham). Oh, and Lee Christmas isn't even the best name of the team: there's Mickey Rourke's Tool, Couture's Toll Road, Jet Li's Ying Yang, and my personal favorite - Terry Crews' Hale Caesar.
And at this point I should have chased away every person who wasn't going to see The Expendables from the moment they heard about it. Like Predators and the upcoming Machete, The Expendables is appealing to a male demographic anywhere between 15 and "old enough to have seen Predator in college." The story is just this simple: mercenary Barney Ross (Stallone) and The Expendables finish a mission, return to hang out at Tool's tattoo parlor and await their next mission. The mysterious Mr. Church (Willis) hires them to take out General Garza, Munroe, and their goons. And they do it.
I don't have to tell you anything else because when I explained "The Indestructables" concept, you know exactly what happens from there on out, so the only question left is "does it deliver?"
Yes it does. Many of the negative reviews of The Expendables focus on what the movie should have been rather than what it is. Of course it would be "cool" to see 103 minutes of carnage and explosions, just like it would be nice to see Samuel L. Jackson fight some muthafuckin' snakes on a muthafuckin' plane, but that's not what we get. In The Expendables' case, there's precedent for that not to happen, even if everyone assumed it would. There is carnage (oh goodness, and when there's carnage it delivers in spades) but the kind of movie The Expendables fits into has breaks in between the action and gore.
Every single one of them has as much (if not more) downtime between action scenes, and that includes the dumbest, loudest, and beloved-est (by the Cap'n anyway) of them all, Commando. Yes, he takes out an entire army by himself, but first Arnold has to figure out where his daughter is and how to get there. People tend to forget this and focus on the puns and one-liners, but you can go down the line and find the same amount of "bonding" or "guys talking" in any of the 80s action movies that The Expendables is invariably compared to.
Honestly, the movie works because of the meshing of styles. You have your 80s and 90s action icons teaming up with a Hong Kong martial arts legend, the best of the "new breed" of action stars (and Jason Statham is that to be sure) a UFC legend, a WWE Superstar, former stars turned DTV staples that got a second career wind (Roberts, Rourke), and Terry Crews, who appears in more comedy than action films but oozes charisma (no pun intended to Charisma Carpenter, who is just fine in a role that exists so that Statham can beat up six guys on a basketball court).
You get clashes of styles that no one really thought they'd see: Jet Li fighting Dolph Lundgren, Sly and Steve Austin having a beat-down, Randy Couture and Austin wrestling, Statham in a knife throwing contest with Mickey Rourke, and Terry Crews cleaning out rooms with a shotgun that fires explosive rounds. All the bases are covered: car chases, throat slicing, neck snapping, kung fu smackdowns, bodies blown to pieces, and of course, the Sylvester Stallone post-Rocky V trademark - a speech about losing your humanity because of the job (delivered by Mickey Rourke this time).
Nothing might actually top the three-way "macho" fest between Stallone, Willis, and Schwarzenegger, though. Stallone shoots the sequence like a Sergio Leone showdown, and each manly man of the Planet Hollywood trifecta refuses to give ground to the other one, resulting in one liners, stare-downs, and a sneaky acknowledgment of Arnold's political aspirations that generated the biggest laugh in the entire film. The only thing that comes close is a scene between Dolph Lundgren (who has quite a good performance in the film) and Steve Austin, two guys that I wouldn't want to be on the "bad" side of.
I will set a few things straight though: Terry Crews and Randy Couture are barely in The Expendables. There's a reason that Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, and Jet Li are listed before the title and everybody else comes afterward: Couture and Crews are in the beginning of the movie and the end of the movie, and that's it. Mickey Rourke and Steve Austin are in more of the film than the last two-fifths of The Expendables. Don't expect much more than Statham or Stallone in the protagonist on-screen ratio for the first half of the film. When Jet Li joins in as a main character, he gets a chance to shine, but even that's second fiddle to the co-leads.
And to address some of the "where was ____?", I'll just say that there's nowhere that Jean-Claude Van Damme or Steven Seagal would have fit in The Expendables that I saw. There's not really a role for either of them that'd make sense, even if JCVD had Jet Li's role (which is of "the short guy," and wouldn't have been as funny with the "Muscles from Brussels"). Stallone mentioned that he reached out to Kurt Russell, James Woods, Ben Kingsley, Forrest Whitaker, 50 Cent, and Danny Trejo, and that things didn't work out for various reasons. While I have no idea if there will be a sequel to the film, the ending certainly leaves things open enough to include more former members, new members, or rivals in another installment, so who knows.
By now all the Cap'n can do is help swing your decision to see it one way or the other. "Serious" reviewers (of which I clearly can't be for my taste in horror and action films) are going to scoff at anybody recommending this that isn't pouring a six-pack down their throat and butting heads as a greeting, but if you have an inclination for an action film that's not going to drive you crazy with badly edited fight scenes or feel the need to undermine itself whenever possible, or just an honest to goodness action movie with people who look like they could do the ridiculous things demanded of them, The Expendables will be the breath of fresh air you need.
Stallone doesn't re-invent the wheel, but he puts a frame around it that keeps you interested for an hour and forty five minutes that brings some of the best names together and doesn't insult you for buying a ticket. Is it comfort food for guys in the same way that Eat, Pray, Love is for gals and Scott Pilgrim is for geeks? Yeah, but at least it's good comfort food for a change. Even if there aren't any puns (that I can remember).
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