The Expendables

 REVIEW: The Expendables IMDB

MOVIE INFO

• Producer - 
• Director - Sylvester Stallone
• Primary Actors:
  • Sylvester Stallone - Barney Ross
  • Jason Statham - Lee Christmas
  • Jet Li - Ying Yang (are you kidding me?)
  • Dolph Lundgren - Gunner Jensen
  • Eric Roberts - James Munroe
  • Randy Curture - Toll Road
  • Steve Austin - Paine (Thomas?)
  • David Zayas - General Garza
  • Giselle Itie - Sandra
  • Terry Crews - Hale Caesar
    • Quick Trivia:  Originally offered to Wesley Snipes (wasn't allowed to leave the country - IRS), written for Forest Whitaker (had to leave - scheduling conflict), 50 Cent was announced (people hated it), finally Sylvester Stallone casted Terry Crews...great choice!
    • He helped make the movie for me, he's just entertaining
  • Mickey Rourke - Tool
  • Arnold Swartzenegger
  • Bruce Willis

INTRO STUFF

• CHUCK
  • Website footer!  Content areas next...
  • Biz planning for MGB - listening to a lot of This Week in Startups
  • Fringe - corny show sometimes filled with inconsistencies, but a lot of fun
  • New contract!!!  I will have no life
• MIKE
  • Sick as a dog, playing many a video game...

SYNOPSIS

•  In a world...where soldiers sell their loyalty to those who pay, one man finds something other than money to fight for...

WALKING IN F&T (FEARS & THOUGHTS)

•  
  • CHUCK
    • This is probably not going to be a good movie, but I don't care because of the cast....it wasn't a good movie and I didn't care...
  • MIKE
    • PURE AWESOME!

FIRST ACT

•  
  •  
    •  
  • Starts with motorcycles in a city and then...The Pirates (weird transition) (CUT SCENE)
    • They pull up to the boat (with their light shining....)
    • Pirates were an interesting (though a little too old for topical for american audiences) touch
    • We have to have an opening sequence, and they showed that they can (literally) shoot fish in a barrel...
    • Hostage situation
      • Dulph's gun removed the guy's torso - I think it was a grenade launcher..
      • Great place for a negotiation
      • Dulph goes crazy

...LATER SCENES

•  
  • Lee Christmas visits the girlfriend
    • love Ducatis...could tell just by the V-twin sound of the exhaust
  • Tool & Barney Ross hang out
    • work on a tattoo (took him two seconds to finish the tattoo 'expendables') I think he added a letter after every job, or something like that.
    • get the next job Love the old-school phone that gives Tool the info...in this day of digial everything, the job comes from a rotary phone...nice statement about these guys
  • Meet up with the client
    • Arnold vs Stallone for the contract 
    • Stallone said that this scene was awkward for all of them, they couldn't get it right.  He said it was strange because they were all very experience, but there they were acting like amateurs, took them a little while then they were warmed up.
  • Scout out the job
    • Fly in on their Grumman Albatross! - love the Grumman Goose with new upgrades (motorized tip tanks, PT-6 engines, etc), but this'll do.
    • Meet their contact - Sandra, artist, daughter of the general
    • Tour the city - run into problems hanging out by the palace
    • Mob hires Dulph to get a team and go 
  • Tool & Barney Ross talk - the Bosnian story
  • "I'm leaving" scene by Sylvester (probably the worst acting by Stallone ever...uh, see you guys later...uh....bye.) Something was missing there...
  • Truck chase scene
    • He's driving an amazing sounding (500hp+) truck, but the old Durango keeps up and is practically running them off the road, not to mention the X-Terra...lolz...
    • Puts his partner in the truck bed (did he want to kill him?) - right out of the end sequence of Cobra...except it was Sly in the bed...
    • Jet Lee vs Dolph Lundgren  Went on too long, yet another short joke...
    • Sylvester pushes a button for a drawer that slides out about 6 inches....how about a spring mount, who needs a button? (overkill for something so simple...like having a 3000psi hydraulic system to flip headlights up or something)
    • Sylvester shoot Dolph (won't say)
  • In the airplane ride over
    • Terry Crews explains his weapons
  • Attack!
    • Set charges (and more charges, and more chanrges...then some C4 to mix it up, followed by some plastic explosive...then a little bomb action...OVERKILL - but that is what we came here for...), I'll go over here....by myself....to get the girl....but I'm not going to tell you....'bye'
    • Blow up a heavy artillary shell by throwing it in the air and shooting it with a pistol...just shoot the helicopters engines!!  It's just a helicopter!  It doesn't take much to ground it!  It is a movie heliportor, which is the inverse of a movie car...two bullets will blow up a car, but it takes thousands to cripple a helo...
    • Fun fighting scenes, why I came to the movie in the first place.  AGREED!
  • He gets in the the airplane and then says under his breath as he is crawling in the doorway....'bye'...how weird and misplaced was that?
  • Gunner is back in the group?  What?!  He's a little psychopathic, can't be trusted, and didn't try to kill them or anything...for some reason I was happy about it though, I didn't want to see Dolph out only as an evil 'cyborg'...

RANDOM THOUGHTS

• Greatest scene ever - AA-12 with Terry Crews
• A movie meant for men who just want to watching something explode, it accomplished its goal; had the cars, the uber sweet trucks (1955 Ford F-100), the motorcycles (Ducati, custom Harleys), the hot girls, the airplanes (wait, that's just me), the fight scenes, the explosions, the damsel in distress (a few times; Lee's girlfriend and Sandra), and of course the big name action heros we've always wanted to see do a movie with each other.
• Barney's Truck was the logical extension of the 49 Merc in Cobra...
• WHERE THE MOVIE BROKE - Mr. Church said that he would get the Expoendables if they did not carry out their mission, and they were NOT going to carry it out after getting back from the island...would them being "pushed" to get the job done also have been a factor?  Was not mentioned again the in movie (maybe the company threatened Mrs. Chrstmas) but then why leave the terrible lines from Wyllis in the movie?
• Further falling apart - they tried to give all of these characters a back story, but not spell it out, but in the end we got it, and their hints at things in their past just caused more questions than answers..Jet Li's family?  We never really cared...

•  

...THE ACTORS

•  
  • Sylvester Stallone - Barney Ross
  • Jason Statham - Lee Christmas
  • Jet Li - Ying Yang
    • I felt like they down played him a little too much
  • Dolph Lundgren - Gunner Jensen
    • Great to see him back on the silverscreen
    • I too love Dolph...
  • Eric Roberts - James Munroe
    • It's Eric Roberts, he's always the evil kingpin (Batman) (The Specialist, with Mr. Stallone as well...) BEST of the BEST
    • Really good actor who tends to be associated with crap...get him and Liv Schrieber a good script
  • Randy Curture - Toll Road
    • Not bad
    • Why was he even there?  Smell many a cut scene...thought he was going to die, just to really piss off the team...Ensign Red-Shirt
  • Steve Austin - Paine (Thomas?)
    • Let him kick some butt, but felt his fire death scene was a little corny
  • David Zayas - General Garza
    • About the only one in this movie who had a second dimension, and pulled it off well, love his work in Dexter...
  • Giselle Itie - Sandra
    • Probably the most acting throughout the movie
  • Terry Crews - Hale Caesar
    • Quick Trivia:  Originally offered to Wesley Snipes (wasn't allowed to leave the country - IRS), written for Forest Whitaker (had to leave - scheduling conflict), 50 Cent was announced (people hated it), finally Sylvester Stallone casted Terry Crews...great choice!
    • He helped make the movie memorable for me....P, P, P, P, POWER!  Old Spice Commercials!  Whoever is at Old Spice is a genius with their advertising campaign.  That was Isaih Mustafa...not Terry Crews...
  • Mickey Rourke - Tool
    • He is still the man, great acting
    • Kept his Iron Man 2 hair extensions, were these shot at the same time?
  • Arnold Swartzenegger
    • Felt a little awkward - out of Practice?  Whole scene was for yucks and it worked...
  • Bruce Willis
    • A good fit for the scene
    • Really, I though he was terrible?  He can wise-crack all day long, but I did not buy him as threatening for a moment...

QUESTIONS:

• The US government's involvement to the Expendables?
• Automatic shotgun (looked like an AA-12) 

THE MACGUFFIN:

 Way too many issues, but this is not a movie to ask a lot of good questions.

Quote of the movie

• • "He's just mad because he wants to be President"
  • "I just got my ass kicked...

CLOSING THOUGHTS

• CHUCK Rating: 3.5
  • Positives
    • So much fun, the actors, the vehicles, the plane, oh my
  • Negatives
    • The story, way cheesy on so many levels.
• MIKE Rating: 4
  • Positives
    • Big, Loud, did not pull punches or mess around with too much digital nonsense
  • Negatives
    • If you hate 80s action flicks, you WILL hate this...