Movie Review: THE EXPENDABLES

Look at the poster for this movie. At first glance, it looks like quite the impressive line-up of action stars. It's like Ocean's 11 for the steroid set. Now think for a moment about what each of these guys do best. Kill, and blow crap up. Now, when you have all those guys killing and blowing stuff up, you get a frenetic mess of a movie that has little plot, and less originality.

I didn't expect much from The Expendables but I was hoping to be surprised. I remember I watched Death Race thinking I was going to hate it but ended up being totally entertained. That didn't happen here. And while the poster touts all these big names, oddly enough it's really a three person show of Stallone, Statham, and Li, with cameos from about a dozen others who really just show up to shoot someone, blow something up, or show that they haven't died since the 80s.

The thin story (or excuse to get these action stars to cross paths) centers around an island nation that is being taken over by a rogue FBI agent(or CIA op, I forget, it doesn't really matter). How this American gets the power to cripple the leader of this nation is something they don't explain, but as villains go, this one isn't all that scary. The Expendable Crew dispatches two of their own, Stallone and Statham, to go to the island, meet a mysterious attractive female contact, and see what can be done to restore order.

There are a few fun moments, but many more that are so loud and over the top that it's just ultimately not worth paying to see. This struck me as a perfect TV movie of the week. I would give it a 4 out of 10.