Rene's Review: The Expendables

MAJOR SPOILERS THROUGHOUT THIS REVIEW!

2 weeks ago, I witnessed an action spectacle that I had been anticipating for quite some time. I was not disappointed. After hearing certain negative comments (Couture and Crews are veritable cameos, The Expendables don’t really work as a team until the end) I tempered my expectations, and came out greatly entertained.

The Expendables is certainly not comparable to Stallone’s previous film, Rambo, especially in the unbridled carnage department, it still succeeds in being a top notch action film, and just the type of fun action that this summer had been sorely lacking, except for the excellent The A-Team.

The negative aspect of the entire team of The Expendables not working together didn’t bother me nearly as much as I thought it would. The movie is 90% Stallone/Statham, 65% Stallone/Jet Li, 40% Crazy Lundgren, and about 20% Couture/Crews.

So yeah, the movie is pretty much the Stallone/Statham show, and what a grand show it is. Statham gets a pretty throwaway subplot involving the lovely Charisma Carpenter as his cheating girlfriend, but it does lead to an awesome fight on a basketball court that reminds one of Liotta’s beating of the guy in Goodfellas, but greater. Statham beats up the asshole tough guy, AND his entire crew of goons, and Statham’s final threat to him is cool.

Stallone gets to show off his heavily tattooed still muscular at 64 and making this 26 year old stocky Hispanic boy hang his head in shame and want to hit the weights more often. He also has a great six shooter that he only uses twice, but those two times are GLORIOUS. Especially the second time.

I said the movie was 40% Lundgren, but he uses that 40% to really be THE standout in the movie. Dolph spends the entire time as a junkie mercenary who blows a pirate into splattery wet bits, and stomps a guy in the face with his huge boot and says “INSECT!” then pulls the guy back up and we see the HUGE footprint on the guy’s face.

Lundgren also wields a shotgun, and smacks Gary Daniels with it delivering my favorite line in the film “I’LL SMACK THAT FU MANCHU MUSTACHE OFF YOUR FACE AND SEND IT BACK TO THE 60’S!”

Lundgren also has one quick fight with Jet Li, and another extended fight with Jet Li, that leads to a hilarious battle in a low caution corridor that leads to Lundgren hilariously smacking his head while Jet Li beats him up.

Speaking of Jet Li, even though he reportedly didn’t really get along with anyone on set, and did no publicity, he has some of the funniest lines, mostly about his “Needing more a money.” and of course “I WOULD HAVE WINNED!” He also participates in a great chase in Stallone’s ultra cool ’49 F-100 (and I swear this chase scene with that truck screams of a homage to the chase with Stallone’s car, which is also gray like the truck and has custom tires, in Cobra). This is after Lundgren makes a deal with Eric Roberts to take out Stallone and his crew.

Ah, Eric Roberts. he is the real big bad guy of The Expendables. Forget General Garza. That guy is a puppet on strings. Eric Roberts is a rogue company man who uses cunning, and muscle in the forms of Gary Daniels and Steve Austin. These 2 gentlemen needed to have more screen time (especially Gary Daniels). They were perfect as the henchmen, and Gary Daniels’ fight with Statham AND Li is short, but satisfying. If he had had more time (as apparently he didn’t), I’m sure Stallone would have made that fight much longer and drawn out.

Let’s not forget the centerpiece of all of the marketing. The Stallone/Schwarzenegger/Willis scene. Schwarzenegger’s role especially sets the movie up for a sequel where Schwarzenegger will play the antagonist for the first time in a non-Terminator role. At least I hope he does, because once he’s no longer The Governator, he’s going to need a big comeback, and what better way for it to be in the sequel to a movie that has been the #1 movie for 2 weeks in a row at this point? Willis brings some welcomed comedy, especially when he asks if Sly and Arnold are going to start sucking each other’s dicks as they stare each other down, and Willis does his “Heh, heh, heh!” laugh, that only he can do, and that he should patent.

The action almost never stops in the movie, and the big set pieces are Stallone and Statham napalming a dock and blowing it to kingdom come, and this is after Statham blows all of the soldiers on the dock into paste with a machine gun.

The next one is of course the climax where everyone gets included in it. I haven’t talked much about Couture and Crews, and it’s of course because they really don’t have much to do in the film. Couture fares worst, as when the sequel is made, he could be the one who gets the boot, while Terry Crews is Terry Crews, and by that I mean one fucking awesome individual. To add to his already awesome charisma, Crews gets a shotgun that fires bullets that go NUCLEAR! That auto shotgun is every man with a tiny penis’ dream. Or the dream of a guy who wants to have a major orgasm that reduces people into red paint. The gun is LOUD. It rocked the theater, and Vanessa and I turned to each other and let out a “Whoa!” along with a smile. It happened several other times, including the aforementioned dock massacre.

Steve Austin turns into The Wicker Man and runs around aflame at one point during the climax, and gets punched back into the the flame filled inferno by Couture. I really would have liked that punch to have been delivered by Stallone, especially since he’s the one who had the big fight with Steve Austin.

My Mother even saw the movie, while she was in California, and loved it, and just mentioned it earlier to me, that at 66 years old, she was really into it, and loved every action filled minute. She even remembered that Dolph Lundgren was The Punisher! Now that really made my day when she told me that.

Vanessa also of course loved the movie, and she even snapped that photo of me where I’m standing next to Dolph Lundgren in that GIANT Expendables standee at our local theater. She snapped that photo this past friday when we saw Piranha 3D, and I knew I had to add it to my review.

I give the movie a solid 10 out of 10, and heartily recommend it to all fans of action movies. Especially the ones from the 80’s. I await the announcement of Schwarzenegger and Stallone finally appearing in a movie and going head to head in another action filled romp.

Rene’s song of the day: “Born On The Bayou” by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Thanks for reading my blog and see you next time!