I didn’t pay too much attention to the first three Expendables movies, but based on casting alone, this fourth installment is by far the runt of the litter. Even Stallone himself can hardly be bothered with this shit anymore, and he’s the only big name this time around (I’m not counting either Andy García, because he was never a major action guy, or Jason Statham, because he stopped being relevant after Snatch).
Whereas the franchise once boasted, at one point or another, Schwarzenegger, Willis, JCVD, Gibson, Ford, and Snipes, Expend4bles scrapes the bottom of the barrel and comes up with Randy Couture, 50 Cent, Megan Fox, a sexagenarian Dolph Lundgren, and a bunch of other random fuckers. I would take Eric Roberts, Steve Austin, Scott Adkins, Kelsey Grammer, and Antonio Banderas any day over this film’s sorry-ass collection of lame ducks. Maybe they should have called this one The Disposables instead.
So devoid of star-power and charisma is this movie that an Expendables die-hard (or even a casual viewer such as myself) might start hoping for a larger-than-life cameo (à la Chuck Norris in the first sequel) to come along and shock some life into the film. No such luck, though; the big surprise at the end is the (re)appearance of Stallone, which reminded me of Danny Aiello escaping certain death (an exploding limousine running over a cliff) and returning for the conclusion of Hudson Hawk (thanks to a a combination of airbags and a sprinkler system), except that it was funny in Hudson Hawk.
But let’s begin at the beginning. After the opening sequence (set in and around an “old chemical plant” that not only is largely, and poorly, computer-generated but also used to belong to Muammar Gaddafi. I knew CGI was fucking evil), Barney Ross (Stallone) gets Lee Christmas (Statham) to help him retrieve a ring he lost the previous night at a New Orleans bar during a thumb wrestling competition.
Whenever he mentions the ring, Barney naturally makes a hand gesture, but when they get to the bar, the ring is seen adorning one the two prongs of a double-headed dildo. Were they talking about a cock ring all along, or are Sly’s fingers really that thick? The obligatory bar fight inevitably follows, which seems to be the only reason for this bizarre scene to exist. As a reminder of the bond between Barney and Lee, it seems uncalled for (not least because their bromance has already spanned three whole movies); moreover, if the idea was to establish the importance of Barney’s ring, using it as a sex toy decoration achieves the opposite effect.
Conversely, the new additions to the team could have used a little more establishing. Take, for instance, Galán (Jacob Scipio), whom Barney doesn’t remember hiring, even though the guy is none other than “Galgo’s son.” Galgo was Banderas’s character in the third (and only the third) film. That’s something viewers are more apt to forget, or just plain not know, than Barney’s and Lee’s man-crush on each other. As for Cent’s character, his name is Easy Day. Why is it that black guys in this franchise must have goofy names? (remember Terry Crews’s Hale Caesar?).
By the way, if you think that an Actor Allusion is the height of wit, then you’re going to get a kick out of the diegetic inclusion of “P.I.M.P.” — which means that a rapper known as 50 Cent exists in this movie’s universe, and although the characters are apparently familiar with his biggest hit, none of them remarks on his uncanny resemblance to Easy Day.
Bad pun lovers are also in for a treat, as García pisses away (figuratively, unlike Couture literally pissing the heroes’ way out of captivity. Really) decades of good will with the line, “bye bye, Bai” (similar to the bar scene, that cringetastic line is the only reason a throwaway character named Phen Lyong Bai was written into the plot).
That’s embarassing only for García, though; it’s embarassing for the entire movie, on the other hand, when he says, “we got 12 minutes before this ship blows up like a Roman candle.” Yeah, right; director Scott Waugh should be so lucky — unless, of course, the Roman candle they’re talking about is digitally and unconvincingly added in post-production, in which case I agree 100%.
Again, I’m not an Expendables connoisseur, but I thought that the franchise was meant as an affectionate throwback to the big dumb action flicks (and I mean that endearingly) of the 80s and 90s, wherein lots of stuff got blowed up real good. The unerring Roger Ebert used that phrase sarcastically, but the fact remains that in those films (the Cobras, the Commandos, the Universal Soldiers, et al), the stuff that got blowed up did so real good indeed — that is to say, with practical effects as opposed to SyFy-bad visual effects.
To put it in perspective, early on in Expen4bles, a bullet hits a window, and the cracks in the glass are computer-generated. And that’s just the tip of the bullshit CGI iceberg. I’ve seen videogame cutscenes more realistic, more entertaining and, I reckon, more expensive than this movie’s set pieces (more like shit pieces). All things considered, Expen4bles has neither brains nor brawn; by definition, a big dumb action flick can get by without the former, but it’s dead in the water without the latter. No wonder Sly makes himself scarce.
90% of Everything is Crap 