Just a little basics about the plot and the storyline. I was surprised that there was one. Usually, when you hear that Sylvester Stallone is premiering a movie, I think of a shoot-em-up with a lot of fighting, guns and action but a storyline that could have been written by a five year old. However, I was impressed with the multiple plots and subplots present in The Expendables. Now I won’t lie to you, this was a shoot-em-up movie, so if you are expecting the storyline to rival Inception, well you will be sadly disappointed; but compared to similar movies this one actually had a feeling of a story. I will not ruin the entire movie for you, but there are dual subplots for the major characters (Statham and Stallone) that really helped me to connect with the characters. Like most of this genre, the basic underlying storyline is gleaned from the trailer, but there were also a few additions and twists that kept me guessing and intrigued.
Enough with the sappiness and praise, let’s get to the nitty gritty. The Expendables opens, as seen in the trailer, with the team in a shootout with a bunch of Nigerian sounding hostage takers. Through this firefight, the skill and prowess of each of the team members are introduced and well it was just an awesome scene. This is followed up with the guys coming back and relaxing/preparing for another mission. Insert cameos here…After Statham and Stallone “recon” the next mission, in other words blowing it to hell and back, the team decides whether or not to take the mission. Finally in a fit of conscience, they decide to help liberate the island from the evil dictators, I know you are as shocked as I was. Of course, this is followed by a long, intense segment of action goodness. Finally, after a few twists and a few of the best fight scenes of the movie, the entire team is home safe and sound celebrating their victory.
About that, I was truly shocked that none of the “good” guys died. I can understand from a contractual standpoint, and a sequel to have the big names survive. However, with all five men being “big” I think that they could at least afford to kill off one or two. They continually show the fight scenes and impossible odds, and unsurprisingly the good guys come out of it without a scratch…but come on, yeah right. I just wish there was a bit more balance between the deaths of well known actors in this movie.
Speaking of actors, the cast of the Expendables presents such a variety, that it will take me a while to explain the nuances of every character, but I will try. Before I get into individual bio’s though, I have to say that the ability of each individual character to show such diverse personalities in such a short amount of time is nothing short of amazing. There were introspective characters, dense brawn over brain personalities, and romantic personalities present to name a few. When viewing individual characters in this movie, surprisingly, I have to start with Jason Statham. Statham was the most diverse and relatable of all of the major characters in this movie. Throughout the Expendables, he was a joker, a lover, a fighter, oh and a bit of a poet. Whatever the writers needed, Statham’s character was able to fill the gaps, and fill them admirably. I never once questioned the validity or the necessity of Statham’s character showing such a range. Next comes Sylvester Stallone, and he plays his normal brooding role. Like so many of his previous stories, Stallone plays a brooding military man who has a change of heart and tries to use his killer instincts to help someone less fortunate. Um, yeah that is the real extent of his personality complex in this movie. Like Stallone, Jet Li, plays a basic character in the Expendables. He is neither extremely deep, talkative or any other majorly surprising characteristic. However, like in many of his films, Li provides a bit of dry humor to the normally serious and action based movie. The cosmic relief was in the form of Terry Crews, who used his joking and facial expressions brought a lot of levity to the movie. The other major surprise of the cast was the role of Mickey Rourke. In this movie, he was truly the introspective one. He played the wizened sage who the men went to for advice and guidance. When the major emotional change came in Stallone, it was because of a conversation with Rourke. He played the wizened old man, and played it perfectly. Another surprising character is Randy Couture’s. He plays a philosophically minded mercenary, something I didn’t expect from a pro wrestler. The rest of the cast played quintessential characters. Dolph Lundgren and Steve Austin played basic bruisers. They were the two big guys who you expected to have brawn over brains, and the muscles to match. The same can be said for the leaders of the bad guys, David Zayas and Eric Roberts. They were the cold, ruthless men who wanted power and money, and were willing to hurt others to get it. Sadly, that is the best I can do for explaining the characters without ruining a bit of the movie for you.
The only other major problem that I can complain about after watching this movie surrounds a couple of the computer generated scenes that were used for special effects. A few of the scenes in the movie were extremely obvious to being computer enhanced. I know you are saying that I am being hard on the special effects department, and I should accept things as a “movie”. Normally, I would. However, the line has to be drawn when said scenes look like they should be in a Playstation 1 game, not a major motion picture from the 21st century. I can only remember, noticed, three distinct times this was prevalent during the Expendables, and I won’t list them all. I will however, tell you about the most erroneous example of this. During the major fight sequence, there was a scene where Sylvester Stallone took out two guys with his huge knife, and this thing made his Rambo knife look like a stiletto. During this sequence, he cut the hand off of one opponent, and the throat of another. When the hand was sliced off, it looked like a sponge, or the blocky style of video games of old. The same went for the blood spray from the cut neck. Sadly, for that cut, I have seen better neck slicing effects from Youtube videos that my friends made in high school. Harsh I know, but when the rest of the movie was so good it was just so painful to see the mediocre parts.
Like I said, the rest of the action scenes and special effects were up to expectations. I cannot call them surprisingly good, because with a movie like this I expect near perfection. Frankly, the action scenes provided a number of different styles that had a scene for every action lover. There were a couple of gritty fistfights for the classic American action fans. Add to that, a few “Hong Kong” action scenes courtesy of Jet Li, and there is a hand to hand style for every genre. Oh and don’t get me started on the actual shooting scenes. There are scenes of silent killers using blades and breaking necks, to explosive round shotgun drums in an automatic shotgun, blowing the hell out of everything in sight. There was an abundance of scenes where hand to hand, met firearm finishers. I was so very happy about that, since this is my favorite style of fighting in a movie. I won’t go into any more detail about the action, but if you can imagine it, short of fantasy or sci-fi genres, there was an example of it in the Expendables.
In conclusion, I was amazed that this movie delivered on the hype and promises that were made leading up to the release. I was very happy to pay $7 to be able to experience it, and didn’t mind losing a few hours sleep, since I went to the midnight movie. I doubt I would pay to go see it in the theatre again, but when it comes out on DVD it is one that I would consider adding to my library.