The most Expendable film in the franchise
The Expendables is a franchise built on its retro feel of turn-your-brain-off action fun. 2010 saw the release of the first installment of Old Guys, who can still break bad guy limbs, run from big explosions, and make wise cracks about it afterwards. But the fourth installment, creatively titled ‘Expend4ables’, hits theaters this weekend, and it’s a tiresome entry in a franchise that has all the important key parts to the film phoning it in.
Expend4bles takes what’s left of the Barney Ross crew and sends them out to sea. The gang jumps from a plane down onto a container ship that is set to detonate in Russian waters, an event that could potentially set off World War III. On the ship, they encounter a foe they had a standoff with in the film’s first act, Saurto, played by Ike Uwais.
In a franchise that usually spreads its wings and shows off its budget with big set pieces, The Expendables are left confined to a holding cell for most of the movie, complaining about their situation and peeing on hatchway doors that apparently, once wet, they unlock (yeah, I know, weird).
The movie trades Sylvester Stallone for Megan Fox for most of it as the leader of the group. Which adds a cool touch to it for awhile. You think Fox is going to dive deep into some serious butt-kicking, but she doesn’t do much. Her hair and makeup never get messed up during any sort of bad guy altercation or gun fight. Jason Statham is initially kicked off the mission but finds his way onto the cargo ship, and thank God, because he is putting this movie on his back.
A great thing about the first few films is that the cast grew and grew. You never knew how they were going to fit all these names into a movie, but Sly pulled it off. Expend4bles feels like there was a massive party being thrown into the idea and making the film, and nobody really shows up.
Curtis “50 cent” Jackson joins the team and has a few good one-liners; Tony Jaa joins in but is extremely underused; Levy Tran shows up as the character Lash and is given no motivation or back story for being there. As a matter of fact, she doesn’t interact much with the group, with the exception of being enamored by what Randy Coture’s character is packing in his pants.
Andy Garcia joins in as the character Marsh, the CIA agent who assigns the group their missions. There is some weird backstory between him and Stallone’s Barney Ross woven throughout the film that tries to have a big payoff at the end, but it just misses its mark. Dolph Lundgren returns as Gunner because, why the hell not? And since Antonio Banderas was busy, they brought in Jacob Scipio to play Gafan, who is apparently Banderas’s son from Expendables 3.
When this team-up franchise of everyone you loved in a retro action movie started back in 2010, it had most of us hyped about it. Yeah, the first one is still working out the kinks, but by part two, where Van Damme is the bad guy and Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis can commit to more screen time, you feel the franchise is off and running.
However, the fourth installment is flat, poorly cut, and slapped together, hoping they can pawn it off as a fun thrill ride you can just enjoy. No, that’s what the first three did well, and they also felt like there was some vision behind it. Stallone, who directed the first one, always seemed like he had his fingerprints all over the first three. Here he’s barely in it, and it seems like he just signed off on some things to get it made.
There’s no wow factor to Expend4bles. We’re not nostalgic about big muscles and machine guns anymore. And if we were, we could just go find our VHS copy of Commando or Rambo III. We didn’t need a fourth film for this crew, and it’s not even the usual crew, which should’ve been a warning sign to leave it alone in the first place.
Read More: Expend4bles Ending Explained
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Verdict - 3.5/10
3.5/10