You've grown up making these kinds of "what ifs" all your life. "What if there was a Lord of the Rings-Star Wars crossover?" "What if the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fought the X-Men?" "What if every major action star EVER made a movie together?" Well, I'm still waiting on the first two (though Eregon comes uncomfortably close on the former), but the third "what if" has finally been answered, and The Expendables is the result.
My jaw was somewhere below sea level the first time I saw a trailer for this thing. Stalone. Statham. Li. Couture. Austin. Willis. Crews. Rourke. A cameo from the Governator!! OMG WANT.
The plot is delightfully simple. The "Expendables" is a group of mercenaries who get contacted to take out a tyranical dictator in South America. With a movie like this, you don't need a terribly complicated plot. Just give all of those guys the biggest weapons you can find and let them loose, and that's pretty much what happens. There are some twists, sure - some greedy American buttholes have a hand in the country's corruption - but mostly it's nothing more than action and some odd character development.
Stalone actually wrote and directed this thing himself, so I have to commend him for getting so many action stars together for his project. I understand that Segal had to back out due to conflicts, and I'd have liked to have seen Van Damme, but maybe next time. I am not sure if I really get Stalone's sense of writing, though. I swear, practically ALL of the banter between the heroes went completely over my head. It sounded to me like they were all sharing some inside jokes or referencing their old movies, but it would be nice if the audience was clued in to some of them, too. At least it made the group look sufficiently buddy-buddy. That's what surprised me: the six Expendables didn't act like six individual stars. They meshed together in a way that causes me to hope that Stalone goes on to write some more action flicks. Sure, Stalone and Statham are clearly the "main" Expendables, but everyone gets good screentime, particularly a philosophical Rourke.
The action is fun and fast-paced. One scene involving a dock got IGN's summer movie award for "best explosion", and I must agree. Each hero has a specialty - Statham uses knives, Li uses fists, Crews uses the most ridiculous shotgun I have ever seen in my life - so you get a plesant variety of viewing experiences. The finale in particular felt as though you were watching half a dozen separate action movies, each one starring one of the heroes as they run around destroying an entire army of nameless minions. These are guys who know their business: if you want some dependable, old-school ass-kicking, then look no further.
There's really not much else to be said about The Expendables. It's as solid a guy movie as there's been this year. Add it to the list of movies I made in my Predators review if you want to create the ultimate man night of movies. It's simple, it's explosive, and the entire thing is worth seeing just for the Schwarzenegger cameo. Don't miss it.
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