The Expendables | Little White Lies

The Expend­ables

17 Aug 2010 / Released: 18 Aug 2010

Three men in military garb, one with a bandana and a serious expression, standing together.
Three men in military garb, one with a bandana and a serious expression, standing together.
3

Anticipation.

Sly. Arnie. Willis. Stath. 'Nuff said.

2

Enjoyment.

What it delivers in body count The Expendables lacks in dignity.

1

In Retrospect.

The worst action film of the year, and that's saying something.

Sav­ing the world and get­ting the girl might still be all in day’s work, but it now comes at a price: dignity.

There’s some­thing inevitably unsat­is­fy­ing about The Expend­ables. It’s not that it total­ly dis­ap­points: any­one who expect­ed this has-been mus­cle-clad ensem­ble to deliv­er a top-notch action flick would have been seri­ous­ly misguided.

The sad truth is that not one of these for­mer champs has the starch to go 12 rounds at this lev­el any­more (apart from Jason Statham, who is as bona-fide as they come). The cama­raderie is strong and the minds are will­ing, but the bod­ies lack the majesty that made these men stars.

As writer, direc­tor and head badass, Sylvester Stal­lone is pre­dictably top dog here, but with an unhealthy amount of testos­terone on show he nev­er affords him­self enough room to breathe. Along with the rest of his mer­ce­nary crew, Sly is suf­fo­cat­ed by an excess of shouty dia­logue, crap­py CGI and sag­gy mus­cles. Worse still, for every griz­zly dis­mem­ber­ing and ambi­tious set piece explo­sion, an unflat­ter­ing slow-mo cut­away or a cring­ing cameo under­mines The Expend­ables as an old-fash­ioned, no-non­sense action thriller.

On their mis­sion to top­ple a South Amer­i­can dic­ta­tor, Sly, Dolph, Stath and the gang do enough to keep action fans hol­ler­ing, but as the smoke clears all that remains is an unset­tling real­i­ty check. Are these pon­der­ous jesters real­ly the last bas­tions of the gold­en age of the action hero? Sad­ly, it would seem so.

After a dis­mal sum­mer of sub-par action cin­e­ma (take a bow The A‑Team and The Losers), it’s a tragedy that some of the best smack-talk­ing, name-tak­ing machis­mos to have ever swag­gered across the sil­ver screen have resort­ed to such cheap, self-ref­er­en­tial gim­mick­ry. Sav­ing the world and get­ting the girl might still be all in day’s work, but nev­er has it come at such a price.

You might like