★★☆
Director: Sylvester Stallone
Writers: Dave Callaham & Sylvester Stallone
Action stars, martial artists, professional wrestlers and UFC champions. You couldn't fit more testosterone into a single film if you tried. Granted less than half of the big names attached to this film only ended up appearing for a few scenes, it's still an impressive line up, and so for that reason I had to see it.
I wasn't expecting a huge amount from this film, and you don't need to be a genius to see that it's just going to be a bunch of good old fashion mindless action violence. And it was. There's nothing wrong with that. But unfortunately I felt that it fell just slightly short of other films of it's kind, which I would attribute to the visual effects and script.
I don't know who was responsible, whether it was Sly or this 'Dave Callaham' fellow, who's professional writing credits can be counted on one hand, but there were some seriously bad lines in this film. Stallone and Statham both have love interests, and the sentences that came out of their mouths in an attempt to be romantic or dramatic, were just disgraceful. Even soap operas would throw up upon hearing these lines...
Having said that, there were a few one-liners that did get a giggle from me because they were so corny, which is what one-liners should be. The scenes where the lads' were sitting around casually joking with each other, captured the bro-mance that these tough guys have with each other really nicely.
The visual effects were the other problem I had with this film. Each time someone would get shot, bright red blood would shoot out, drawing attention to the fact that it wasn't real. I don't know why they didn't just use squibs, like most other action films, as animating the blood really detracted from the realism and just didn't work for me. There was even a scene towards the end where the flames were added in, which looked very cheap.
The Expendables is an ok film. Nothing special, but it could have been much worse.
