Australian Penthouse

The Expendables
Director: Sylvester Stallone
Stars: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Eric Roberts, Steve Austin, Terry Crews, Randy Couture
Roadshow

Review: Nathan Lawrence

THERE’S a big problem with contemporary action films. Many of them seem to buy into the belief that the evolution of the genre is dependent on intricately layered stories or ‘gray area’ bad guys. With the 2008 release of Rambo Sylvester ‘Sly’ Stallone broke the cycle and reminded action movie junkies what it was really all about: evil bad guys, rough-edged but righteous heroes and a whole lot of bang for your buck.

In many ways The Expendables is a round two of this belief, with Sly hammering home even further what action fans love by cranking everything up to 11. And by everything, I mean everything. Cast? Instead of one established action hero, have half a dozen. Body count? Forget about fighting a genocidal militia force (a la Rambo), try a small army comprised of menacing-looking Brazilian MMA fighters. Blood, guts and overall flair for fatal fury? There are decapitations, severed limbs and enough explosions to make the Hindenberg look like a misfiring Zippo.

The scene is set with a shipload of pirates demanding ransom for some poor nameless sods. As the pirate leader is about to prove his seriousness to the camera, Sly and co arrive to peddle their deadly wares. Jason Statham is the right-hand man; Jet Li is the butt of all ‘little man’ jokes and also on hand to kick butt when the need arises; Dolph Lundgren is immediately established as the ‘shoot first, offer bad one-liners later’ dude (he’s having so much fun with the role that he steals the show); while Randy Couture and Terry Crews are tasked with occasional wisecracks, anecdotes and filling out the bad-arse crew.

The opening action sequence works well to establish where the tensions lie and that these bad-arses have been doing this for a very long time. A meeting with Mickey Rourke and a Statham romantic sub-plot later, and what follows is easily the best scene of the film; and it doesn’t even have any bullets, bodies or blows—although there is some devastatingly awesome banter. Without ruining it for anyone who hasn’t seen the recent trailers, the scene involves a cock fight between three of the biggest 80s action heroes and it works on oh so many levels.

From here, the main plot takes off which involves a mission “to hell and back” that has the lead-up and eventual showdown between Sly’s posse, a South American puppet general who’s making a tidy living off ye olde drug trade and his rogue CIA backers to boot.

Because of the fast pacing of the film many of the supporting cast are mostly underdeveloped, serving as death-dispensing caricatures of familiar action epitaphs. Chemistry extends to small moments between Sly and Statham (who fit a nice buddy dynamic into the squad), Sly and Li and even a plot-driving and rather emotional scene between Sly and Rourke. Depending on your love of 80s action films, you’ll either love or hate the many one-liners in the film, with some more jarringly terrible than others.

It should be noted that the blood and gore has all seemingly been added in post-production, which means it only works half of the time. Any time they close up or have it on screen for too long, it’s noticeably fake in a very bad, very distracting way. Rumour has it that this was the result of the studio being unsure as to whether it would be a PG-13 (M15+ equivalent) or ‘hard R’ (MA15+ equivalent) film until a test audience nodded towards the latter. Seriously, how they ever thought that this type of film would work without blood and guts is ridiculous.

The only other real gripe I had with The Expendables was how Sly chose to shoot some of the fight scenes. Close-up handheld camera shots work well for increasing the intensity of, say, a shootout or the movement from point A to bullet-attracting point B, but for the many mano-a-mano fisticuff moments of the film they do not work. Particularly when you’re up in the actors’ faces and changing angles every few seconds… it makes it really difficult to watch fighting gurus such as Jet Li work their foot-fist magic.

Nitpicking gripes aside, The Expendables really is a fantastic throwback to the beloved action films of yesteryear, with hints of contemporary filmmaking thrown into the mix to make it more relevant and less clone-y. If you’re comfortable with disengaging your brain and letting a movie entertain you with increasingly bigger action sequences, this film will not leave you dissatisfied.