My Movie Review: The Expendables

My Movie Review: The Expendables
3/5

Opening Statement: Stallone puts together an action-star dream team in The Expendables where a group of mercenaries played by actors such as Statham, Li, Coutre, Crews, ect. They are assigned a borderline suicide mission where achieving there goal requires a lot of bloody stylized action.


What's Good: On a small scale it does deliver. The couple action scenes it offers show a good amount of testosterone. There is a man on fire getting punched, knive-throwing, and everything is very well choreographed. Stallone is kind of new to the direction game, but he is a very smart man, because The Expendables does offer more story and heart than most of his testerone filled movies. I also had to fall in love with the ensemble, they all are playing there general typecast, but together, the way they all interact is so much fun. The attention span is very ADD in this film, but it also is a lot of fun when you are commited to watching it. These characters help sway your commitment.


What's Bad:  With the cast, the Expendables kind of had an expectation to deliver all these actors most badassness and create the most badass movie ever. It is far from that, I respect the fact Stallone tried to give the story some heart, which it did have some, but it seriously conflicted with the action. For once I am complaining that they did to much story and not enough action. You have about 2 or 3 actions scenes and a 20 minute finale action scene. Almost to say Stallone knew he wasn't delivering enough action and tried to make up for that in the end. The cinematography could of used some help in the action scenes as well, I felt myself telling the camera to move often cause I wanted to see more of what was going on. 


The Rant: One thing to say is, these actors are NOT to old for action, they are still fun and totally believable.


Consensus: It doesn't completely deliver what it promises, but for what it does deliver The Expendables is fun and the action scenes give out a good dose of testosterone. The performances pretty much save the film.