Gaddafi’s old chemical plant: Remember that ol’ thing? Expend4bles sure does! By using those four words onscreen in its prologue, the ’80s throwback franchise gives a nod to those better times — the “glory days,” we called them — when Expend4bles didn’t exist.
Why the movie didn’t just go with The Expendables 4 is a from-the-start sign of h0w 5tup1d 1t i5. Need another? Right after the title sequence, Barney (Sylvester Stallone) visits a local strip club to retrieve his wedding ring from a two-pronged dildo behind the bar.
I almost wish that alone were the plot, since that’s a scenario I’ve never seen, whereas assemblages of shipping containers? Been there.
But since this series loves it some shipping containers, it tasks Barney and Christmas (Jason Statham, The Beekeeper) — and any other Expendables just chillin’ at HQ — with keeping stolen nuclear detonators from falling into the hands of a shadowy terrorist. Because this madman goes by the name “Ocelot,” prepare to hear that word more than you’d find in an entire run of Zoobooks magazine.
The movie’s largest problem is how little it resembles one. As helmed by Need for Speed’s Scott Waugh, it’s way too clean, looking like a Nickelodeon kidcom at worst or a Jardiance commercial at best. Consider the following:
• Nearly every outdoors shot of our principals is green-screened, even if they’re merely standing on a front porch in the suburbs.
• All instances of blood splatter appear swiped from a decade-old video game.
• Effects sequences involving planes, trucks and anything else explodable are animated no more realistic than episodes of Hot Wheels AcceleRacers.
• Former Transformers eye candy Megan Fox is the one effect not in need of meddling, yet someone has Clone Stamped her entire face in Photoshop to give her an eerie RealDoll look.
With three-peat Expendables like Jet Li, Terry Crews and Arnold Schwarzenegger hard-passing on a return, new recruits have been drafted apparently at random from Redbox, by Redbox. When he’s not steering a tugboat, Tony Jaa (Furious 7) impresses with his lightning-fast moves, and Levy Tran (The First Purge) makes a brief impression wielding a chain. Meanwhile, Andy Garcia (Geostorm) chews a toothpick, and 50 Cent (Den of Thieves) utters modern action cinema’s most clichéd line: “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout!”
Despite the brainpower of three screenwriters, one good scene made it through to final product: Dolph Lundgren’s sniper character can’t shoot for shit without first donning reading glasses.
I enjoyed the first film. Same goes with The Expendables 2 and 3, albeit to a lesser, messier degree, and I can’t tell you a single thing that happens in them. Expend4bles is such a huge step down in quality — not to mention literacy — that it’s too often indistinguishable from the franchise’s direct-to-video imitators. Perhaps it’s time for The Expendables to go from expandable to expunged.
Sly almost makes a wise decision to ensure if there’s a fifth chapter, it’d be without him. But you know the 33 credited producers wouldn’t allow that. —Rod Lott
