film, eyeballs, brain

Sylvester Stallone’s miserable new film The Expandables has exactly one good idea in it: surely realizing that having “STALLONE” above the title simply wasn’t going to cut it, he added “STATHAM,” “AUSTIN,” “LI,” “LUNDGREN,” “COUTURE,” etc. — and “SCHWARZENEGGER” and “WILLIS,” for good measure, though the latter’s roles are about a minute each. Like that would save this movie. There’s a missed opportunity here for a reflection on aging, if you ask me, by not casting Stallone’s actual contemporaries. (Speaking of which, where was Steven Seagal?) The plot is inconsequential: there’s a tropical island, a tinpot dictator, and a renegade CIA agent turned drug dealer (played, in usual oily fashion, by Eric Roberts).

But for all its testosterone overdosing and phallic weaponry, The Expendables is a flaccid, limp movie: the action sequences are surprisingly inert, relying on quick cuts to create the illusion of actual movement. Things get much worse when the movie, by way of breathtakingly lazy dialogue, decides to explore the protagonists’ softer side by throwing women willy-nilly into the mix. (It doesn’t work; like a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, there’s zero chemistry between the hero and the woman who has to be rescued. Speaking of which, where was Van Damme?) It’s only when we get to some good ol’ brawling towards the end that the film begins to perk up a bit, but it’s too late. The Expendables has the feel of a Golan-Globus schlock actioner from the mid-’80s, maybe starring Chuck Norris — you know, the kind that went straight to video and saw theatrical release only in the Third World — except much worse. (Speaking of which, where was Norris?)

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