Watching The Expendables is a lot like getting beat up, I imagine. Things happen so quick you never get to process them, the reasons for everything happening are not entirely clear, your memory of events is blurry afterward, and you end up feeling a lot less masculine when it's all over. The pace of the film is unceasingly set to 'wait? what?' and only manages to slow itself down when it feels obliged to add pathos to our lumbering, cool-talking, fist-bumping protagonists. Speaking of protagonists, did director Sylvester Stallone think he'd being doing us all a favor by subtly jamming the camera approximately four inches from each actor's face during dialogue scenes? If you've ever wondered just how acquainted you could get with Mickey Rourke's punched-out facade or Stallone's wax-dummy skin, The Expendables will surely answer this for you.
The plot is the kind of larger-than-life, questionable odds affair you'd expect from this type of action movie. Somehow five guys with necks wider than their heads are expected to overthrow not just a small dictatorship, but the entire army that defends said dictatorship. I'd be the first to forgive a throwaway excuse to unleash almost two hours of bloodshed, but The Expendables wants to give everything a reason or meaning outside of 'good guys kill bad guys because they're bad'. The ultimate decision to go overthrow this imaginary country is made after an existential soliloquy delivered with surprisingly effective aplomb by Mickey Rourke's character, Tool -- the tough guy with a conscious and a heart. Additionally, the film attempts to flesh out Jason Statham's Lee Christmas for reasons unknown in the framework of a sensitive guy who's had his heart broken. Thankfully, this somewhat superfluous side-plot is completely and utterly saved by the presence of one Charisma Carpenter. Long absent from anything semi-relevant in TV or film, it's comforting to know she can still rock the screen simply by being on it. I suppose the words she speaks are good too. While the chemistry between Statham and Charisma (because I like to pretend I'm on a first-name basis with her) is passable, it's a shame that the romance between Stallone and Statham is hundreds of times more palpable. This is first and foremost a story about bros high-fiving and axe-kicking heads loose from necks together.
The action is great and entertaining and requires no thought process passed marveling at the way a guy's head realistically explodes and how cool it is to watch a guy kill ten people with throwing knives. You may also wonder how old Stallone is (hint: 64!!) and how his hips don't break instantly at the thought of such intense skirmishes. Headaches may ensue thanks to cinematography that sometimes frames action too closely and relies too much on a shaky camera to evoke chaos. All in all though, The Expendables does not disappoint when it comes time to start shooting bullets.
In the end, The Expendables doesn't really live up to it's namesake. In all the chaos unfolding on screen, the main characters never take even one noticeable injury making them anything but expendable. Have you seen Rambo? It's basically Stallone running through the jungle killing everything and being unstoppable. Ok, now divide that one character into five and throw them into a war with an entire army. That's essentially all you need to know about The Expendables. Nameless people die; quips are quipped; seemingly dead leads inexplicably show up in the final scene alive and laughing; and at the end of the day after hundreds have been mercilessly murdered, the most important thing is paying off a joke about how quickly two men can kill.
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