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The Expendables: 'See it with the rowdiest crowd possible'

Sylvester Stallone's action epic may draw on a hackneyed plotline, but a film stuffed with heavyweight stars has goodwill and charm in abundance
The Expendables
Oh, it's that movie again … Stallone and Rourke in The Expendables

It's being pushed as a return to the good old wantonly violent action movies of the 1980s, an antidote to the "realism" of the Bourne movies. It is, but unfortunately it's the third major release this year about a misfit gang of tough guys on a daring suicide mission (after The Losers and The A-Team).

  1. The Expendables
  2. Production year: 2010
  3. Country: USA
  4. Cert (UK): 15
  5. Runtime: 103 mins
  6. Directors: Sylvester Stallone
  7. Cast: Bruce Willis, Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Mickey Rourke, Sylvester Stallone
  8. More on this film

It's not a new plotline by any stretch, and its repetition undermines what could have been an unusual mix of nostalgia and extreme violence (a curious concoction Stallone hit upon with his most recent Rambo). It turns The Expendables from the intended event into "Oh, it's this movie ... again". It's not ruinous, it just takes a little of the shine off it.

While The Expendables' movie DNA can be traced back to such large-cast havoc movies as The Dirty Dozen, it's to the 1980s action spectaculars that it has the strongest family resemblance. It all kicked off in 1982, still my favourite year in cinema and incredibly strong in genre classics: Mad Max 2, The Thing, Tron, Blade Runner, Creepshow.

It was also the year Stallone delivered First Blood and Schwarzenegger gave us Conan the Barbarian. Those two movies are incredibly serious, but sold us on the rather ludicrous idea of one-man armies. Things quickly got sillier; a bullet wound could be shrugged off, explosions could be outrun (in slow motion), dialogue was pared down to threats and quips. And heroes never showed any emotion apart from in one scene, where they were reduced to tears telling a tale of friendship or innocence destroyed by violence (such as the unforgettable "His legs" speech from First Blood).

You'll be pleased to learn that all those enjoyable elements appear in The Expendables. It's got a lot more charm than the other two similar action flicks we've endured this year, with the sort of cast that gets a big US sitcom-style cheer from the audience whenever they enter the fray. Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren and "Stone Cold" Steve Austin all feature, while cameos from Bruce Willis and Arnie nearly take the roof off.

It's not particularly well made, but the patchiness only adds to the considerable goodwill and charm the movie carries. It has the same vestigial roles for women that the others had, but you really wouldn't expect it to be any different. Gisele Itie is simply a damsel in distress, and as for Charisma Carpenter - well, one would hope she has some woodworking skills, so that her name isn't completely ironic.

And the action? Well, it delivers on that score. There are plenty of standout sequences: Dolph's opening "warning shot", Statham strafing a jetty from the nose of a seaplane, Terry Crews' shotgun/machine gun hybrid, Statham delivering a great beat down on a basketball court (with a brilliant payoff quip). It makes for a great time in the cinema and you should see it with the rowdiest crowd possible.

I saw the film just after a screening of The Human Centipede, and I couldn't help but feel that movie was the better in terms of delivering on both premise and promise. Perhaps it's down to the overfamiliarity (especially this year) of The Expendables' plot, or maybe I was simply expecting too much from a movie with Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Willis, Mickey Rourke and Lundgren (after all, they're only superhuman). It's impressive, just for the logistics of getting all these people in one film. But as a result of that feat, characters seem to wander in and out of the movie (as though all their schedules are stupidly busy).

It may not be a classic of the form, like Die Hard, The Terminator or First Blood, but it's easily as much fun as notable also-rans of the action genre like Commando, Cobra and Under Siege 2: The Dark Territory. In a year that's shaping up (with few exceptions) to be a huge letdown in the cinema, that's good enough for me.

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