Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Mickey Rourke, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, Dolph Lundgren, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Figuratively and practically, there isn't a marquee on earth big enough to hold all of them. Yet they all play their parts in the retro action thriller 'The Expendables.'
The movie basically stars everybody who has ever held a gun and coined a catchphrase after killing someone on screen in the last thirty or so years. Directed by Stallone, the plot concerns a group of mostly good-hearted mercenaries who band together for a dangerous mission. The fact that this also could describe a fair number of action movies produced in the last thirty or so years is part of the movie's attempt to lure an audience-this is action cinema as comfort food, and the viewer is meant to slip into these familiar characters and situations like a football fan putting on a throwback jersey.
In general, critics have faulted the film's lack of inventiveness, but some have found that the movie delivers some solid, if predictable, thrills. Here's what the reviewers are saying:
'An effective mix of lean and over-the-top, 'The Expendables' is often preposterous, but it achieves the immediacy of a graphic novel without the overdone mythology.' [Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter]
'Where is Jean-Claude Van Damme? If I go to see a movie called 'The Expendables,' which already features Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Dolph Lundgren, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, I expect a place to be found, amid this noble array of thinkers, for the cuboid Belgian.' [Anthony Lane, The New Yorker]
''The Expendables' ends with a knife thrown at the camera, a parting assault on the audience reminiscent of 1903's The Great Train Robbery. This is action as timeless as the reptilian brain-and if The Expendables is no classic, for about 20 minutes, it blowed up real good.' [, The Village Voice]
Some funny moments here, and I think it's pretty good. The sight of seeing Michael J. Fox playing Marty, old Marty, Marty Junior, AND Marlene (!) McFly is a hoot.
Not as good as the first, but still pretty good.