The-Expendables

Review by Rolling Stones

Admit it. the idea of Sylvester Stallone assembling a team of inglorious bastards to kick ass in The Expendables is a testosterone turn-on. And who gives a crap that the man who was Rocky and Rambo is now 64. Or that Arnold Schwarzenegger, coaxed out of the governor’s office for a cameo, is 63? Or that co-stars Bruce Willis and Mickey Rourke are in waving distance of Social Security? These grizzled geezers all look ready to rampage. You’ll be salivating.

As director and co-writer (with Doom‘s Dave Callaham), Stallone had the idea to ramp up his AARP team with youngerbloods like Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li, Terry Crews, Stone Cold Steve Austin and mixed-martial-artist Randy Couture. Only Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme are no-shows at this party.

So why oh why is The Expendables such a limp-dick bust? Because Stallone forgets to include non-spazzy direction, a coherent plot, dialogue that actors can speak without cringing, stunts that don’t fizzle, blood that isn’t digital and an animating spirit that might convince us to give a damn.

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Review by Time

A bunch of Somali pirates are behaving inhospitably to their captives when a bunch of heavily armed, massively muscled gents drop by and say, in so many words, Please don’t. In the ensuing firefight, all the hostages are saved and all the bad guys die — one of them getting hit with a small nuclear device (actually an AA-12 auto-assault 12-gauge shotgun) that vaporizes him from the belt up. Chalk up another successful mercenary mission for the Expendables.

Sylvester Stallone must have salivated when he saw David Callaham’s original script for The Expendables, which asks: What if the Over the Hill Gang just blew up the freakin’ hill instead? What if the team’s next assignment were Vilena, a Caribbean country headed by a military despot (David Zayas) but really run by a megalomanical ex-CIA agent (Eric Roberts)? What if Sly’s character fell in love with the General’s idealistic daughter (Giselle Itie) and felt compelled to overthrow the country with just a few pals and enough artillery to start World War III? And what if these bad-asses were played by actors who played similar action-film characters back in Sly’s superstar era?

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Review by The Globe and Mail

Rival mercenaries Sly Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger meet up with CIA spook Bruce Willis to bid on a contract. “Give this job to my friend here, he loffs playing in a jungle,” Schwarzenegger says, walking away.

“What’s his problem?” Willis offers.

“He wants to be president,” Stallone smirks.

At which point we say goodbye to the A-team – so long Bruce and Arnie – and The Expendables brings on bench players Eric Roberts and Stone Cold Steve Austin to provide further obstacles for Stallone in his new, dangerously impossible screen mission: snatching a bosomy revolutionary from a jungle fortress guarded by machine gun-wielding guerrillas.

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