Plot: The Expendables are a group of mercenaries who are lead by Barney Ross. Ross gets a job from a man named Mr. Church who wants him and his team to overthrow a dictator named General Garza in Vilena. So the mission is on with The Expendables going off to fight Garza with the help of Garza's daughter Sandra.
Now let me start of with pointing out that this movie clearly is meant to be made just for the big mindless action with a whole bunch of action stars. So naturally I watched this movie expecting to just enjoy the action and try to not even bother with the story like I often do. The result...was almost in no way as enjoyable as I would have liked. For a movie that is meant to be just for the action and nothing else, it seemed to bother with its so-claimed stories and characters a lot more than it bothered to give us the action. All I really remembered from watching this movie was Sylvester Stallone talking to Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger in one scene, then a whole bunch of him talking to Mickey Rourke, some of the action, some forced betrayal thing between Stallone and one of the Expendables...and that's kind of it. I remember some other bits, but every time I think about this particular film, all I really remember is little bits of the action, and mainly just Stallone talking to someone. Maybe they were trying to go with giving us at least something of a story so that it's not too much of the action or something... key word there being maybe. And that idea would be somewhat fine with if it wasn't so dull, and hallow, and lazy and altogether boring! I mean you could be drunk and yet be capable of writing a more entertaining screenplay than this. The closest thing that interested me in terms of what was happening in the movie that wasn't the big action was the character, Christmas' brief storyline about him and his girlfriend, but after that, nothing. It was just a hallow script with hallow characters, a bland reason to go after the antagonists who have a very cliched reason to be evil, a forced relationship between Ross and Sandra, a forced betrayal story line, that are all in little to no way interesting. And I know it's stupid to talk about all of that in a movie where focusing on any of the story or characters is pointless, but I'm only talking so much about it in this review because they put so much of it in this movie. And what's worse is that even with the mindless action, they barely take any advantage of what they can do with it using these stars. The majority of the Expendables group are basically sidelined in just appearances alone between the beginning and the end, and any other action star that's not and Expendable (Rourke, Schwarzenegger and Willis) are mostly there to just...talk. I mean for heaven sakes what's the point of putting Schwarzenegger and Willis in a movie that's made to be just a group of action stars in a big mindless action film if they're not even joining the fight? As for the action itself, the majority of it was just forgettable with the exception of the climax. The climax is where things got interesting with the Expendables just killing a bunch of bad guys with guns, explosives, machetes and so on. It was an enjoyable big climax and I was glad to have finally gotten to it when I did watching the movie.
And that's my review for The Expendables. It's made to be just for the mindless action with a bunch of action stars, and so I watched it with Blaine expecting to enjoy the movie for bringing me just that. But what I found instead was a movie that gave us more of it's very hallow story and characters, a lack of taking advantage of certain cast members, and only some action that took until the climax to be entertaining in any way. If you can enjoy the movie as it is anyway, good for you and please continue to do so. But to me, this was a disappointment that generally failed almost miserably in really using the content it has. Now The Expendables 2 on the other hand...stay tuned for that review.
Rating: 10%
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