
The Expendables” was a straightforward premise gather a group of 1980s action stars such as Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Delph Lundgren, and Mickey Rourke, and place them at the center of an old-school-style shoot-up with contemporary actors such as Jason Statham, Jet Li, Randy Couture, and Steve Austin and put them all together in a film where they blow things up real good. The film was no masterpiece, but the aggressive 80s retro approach it felt like exactly the kind of thing that great Cannon Films in the late 1980s would have conjured up had a certain lunkheaded charm, and it wound up being a surprise hit. An incredibly disappointing second and third sequel were released in 2012 and 2014, and neither was successful during the box office run. The last two films served their purpose as B-movie fodder and a way for veteran action stars including Harrison Ford, Chuck Norris, Wesley Snipes, Jean Claude Van Damme, Antonio Banderas, and inexplicably Kelsey Grammar to waste a couple of adequately paid weeks reminiscing of the glory days sorta like a genre attempt at a Hall of Fame game, and while much did not get done, two stars were awarded the praise.
The franchise has now been rebooted with “Expend4bles”, even though there has not been a single request for it, and it has been 10 years since the third installment of this series had bombed in the theaters. Even though, “revived” might not be the most suitable word to use as this so-called ‘exercise’ in meat-and-potatoes filmmaking is laughable at the very least. From what we got to see in the credits, this movie had more executive producers than actors with dialogue and what was on display was mind numbing action sequences that had no substance. The chaos of the shootings, stabbings and punches in this flick did not come even close to the utterly brutal way the action sequences were unveiled.
This time, veteran Expendables Barney (Stallone) along with Christmas (Statham), Gunner (Lundgren) and Toll (Couture) are working together with new members Easy Day (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson) and Galan (Jacob Scipio), who is presumably the child of the character played by Banderas. The team is put to work under a new ‘top secret’ mission supervised by CIA agent Marsh (Andy Garcia). An arms dealer Rahmati (Iko Uwais) breaks into one of Gaddafi’s obsolete chemical plants in Libya and steals nuclear detonators for Ocelot, a questionable personality that destroyed another one of Barney’s teams long ago. Unfortunately, the mission gets complicated for Barney. When Christmas attempts to rescue Barney and alter the plan, he gets kicked out of the team.
There is still an ocelot loose, and it seems as though the hope is to rouse WW III between the US and Russia. The Expendables disband again, only this time with Marsh in tow. There’s also the added advantage, for Christmas at least, that the groups leader has also taken the role of on-and-off girlfriend of Christmas. And of course, Christmas’ reply is a staunch ‘no’ which as usual initiates a wild goose chase for an always willing Barney’s friend Dacha. So, in the end, everyone finds themselves on board a gigantic barge in the process of being whisked away while, attempting to save the world for the sake of world peace while fighting off swarms of unknown antagonists who are out to blow them up with a bomb that’s about to go off.
The so-called big budget action movie “Expend4bles” does not raise any controversy among critics for being poorly executed. It is almost palpable that every single person involved in the production of the movie approached it with utter contempt. The screenplay seeming to have been hastily created (or “slap-dashed”) by Kurt Wimer, Max Adams, and Tad Dagger hart emits the feeling of sloppiness usually encountered with Mad Libs. Unfortunately, Scott Waugh takes a similarly lethargic approach to directing as the movie is teeming with incredibly bad CGI, rendering its action scenes unbelievably dull. At times it seems like the makers simply gave up on piecing together the movie and threw it together haphazardly, as it appears much too substandard for the franchise which is notoriously known to be very profitable.
The saddest part of this entire situation is Eliminators, the truth is Scott Waugh is not even trying anymore. He has decided that he cannot do any better and he is running out of ideas. He considers the creative heroes of action cinema obsolete where he does seek them in all future projects.
At least in those earlier movies there was a certain level of excitement at watching Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and Willis together (at least outside of a Planet Hollywood stockholders meeting) and these two managed to keep that up as they continued to bring more old faces into the fold. Here, with fewer familiar faces than before with Stallone himself scarcely involved, the newer additions become a lot more prominent with the exception of Jaa and Uwais (who only generate some real excitement during the few seconds they are allowed to show off their martial art skills). The rest of them are not exactly action stars and few of them come close to “star” status as a lot of action stars have very mediocre careers. Hopefully out of all the people Fox is by far the most ridiculous of the group, who seems to be there as a reminder of that concede but never fulfilled all female “Expendables” spinoff.
Yet in this case, it appears that option “anything” is restricted to delivering every line in a monotone voice and maintaining a stiff appearance to an extent that one assumes that she must have filmed this between the set-up shots of this year’s Sports Illustrated photoshoot.
And so, this is how it begins and ends: “Expendables 4” is a true disaster and the most I am willing to give this sequel is that it should serve as a closure to a franchise that has overstayed its welcome. At least for another ten years.
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