The Expendables

How long have we all been waiting for this week to come? For that first laconic quip. That first shotgun blast. That first body slam, that first knife fight. Whatever. Ever since The Expendables was first whispered about, our heads have been full of the possibilities. I was no different than anyone else, and if I could show you it'd be pretty obvious that we've written more stories about this film than anything else over the past year. Sylvester Stallone's muscular, brawny action extravanga is overflowing with more battle hardened movie heroes than my little brain could ever imagine. With the likes of Jet Li, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Steve Austin, Bruce Willis and more riding shotgun, The Expendables should be the greatest action film ever assembled. And it is. For about fifteen minutes.

Let's be honest, nobody cares about the plot of this movie, right? We're meant to be driven to the edge of testosterone filled excitement, not obsessing over what these guys are actually fight for. Right? Even so the plot is so thin it's almost non-existent. Stallone plays Barney Ross, an aging but still jacked former military guy and leader of a pack of wild mercenaries known as The Expendables. His right hand man is pinpoint knife wielder Lee Christmas(Jason Statham); following in their shadow are Yin Yang(Jet Li); the looney tunes Gunner Jensen(Dolph Lundgren); Toll Road(Randy Couture); and Hale Caesar(Terry Crews). I'm serious. Those are the names, folks.

The film opens with an establishing standoff, Stallone's crew vs. a bunch of Somali pirates holding some people captive. After a round of jaw jacking, the first vicious kill(a pirate split open like a baked potato from a gun blast) should've set the stage for 90 minutes of over-the-top gratuitous violence. Rather than jumping from that vicious battle into even bigger and bloodier scenarios, we get to watch Christmas get his heart steamrolled by his cheating ex-girlfriend(Charisma Carpenter), then Mickey Rourke(as a former Expendable named Tool!) shows up to wax caveman poetic about the mental toll of killing. Even though it pulls the brakes on any momentum the story was building, Rourke's scene can't help but remind you of the emotional depths he plundered in The Wrestler.

As if encapsulating everything that's both right and wrong with this flick in one single scene, Barney is approached by a mysterious figure named Mr. Church(Bruce Willis) to take on a deadly suicide mission nobody else seems to be up for. Not even Barney's distinguished competition, Trench(Arnold Schwarzenegger), wants in on it. Church hires them to take out a ruthless South American dictator(Eric Roberts). That's all you really need to know about that. It's undeniably cool seeing these three together even if only for a few minutes. But the scene has no pop. You expect a combination of Stallone, Willis, and the Governator to be so combustible it burns through the screen. Instead it was like a bunch of really old friends who just finished a round of golf.

Putting together a cast this iconic couldn't have been easy. Rather, finding enough screen time to make sure everyone got their moment in the sun couldn't have been easy. The years haven't been kind to Stallone, and he looks like he's aged about 10 years since 2008'sRambo. Statham is the only guy out of this group with a legit action career that's on the rise, and so you'd expect him to carry most of the action. He does get one scene to establish how much of a badass he is, but mostly everybody else is left behind. Jet Li scores most of the jokes as the fastest, but tiniest man in the group(he's short so he has to travel farther and should be paid more). For the most part Couture and Crews are afterthoughts. Where's the comraderie? The brotherhood? We only get that out of Stallone and Statham, but nobody else. The Losers were a much tighter knit group than this.

Once all the talking is done and we get past the distractingly awful script(which underwent numerous rewrites, and it shows), The Expendables eventually turns into the symphony of chaos and destruction and bad puns that we all hoped for. It's what we always wanted. Everything seems to have been constructed out of gun powder and vodka. Enemies are dispatched in a shower of blood and body parts that would make Eli Roth do a double take. If you're a guy and you have a set then you're going to mark out when Terry Crews gets his moment in the sun. Wrestling and UFC fanatics get that long awaited battle between Randy Couture and Stone Cold Steve Austin they never asked for. It's actually quite awesome and easily the best fight of the flick.

It's all pretty predictable. Everything you expect to happen does in fact happen. The bad guy is a douche. The good guys come knockin'. Stuff blows up real good. Men grunt. Women swoon and take their place on the back of Harleys. I get it. That's exactly what The Expendables is supposed to be. It's like one big bloody soap opera for dudes, and despite all its many faults I was still smiling throughout the whole thing. It's stupid, dumb action. When the DVD drops I'll be the first one to run out and buy it. When it's on cable and I run across it chances are pretty good the channel surfing will end.

It's pretty much a given that we'll see a sequel, with the promise of even more big names to join in on the fun. I pray Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal pull their heads out of their butts long enough to enlist. Kurt Russell passed on an appearance this time, but will he do so a second time? The possibilities are endless. Besides, as the biggest star of everybody involved, The Expendables can never truly end until Arnold has a chance to utter his famous words, "I'll be back".  And so will they.