So yea, The Expendables, every action film lovers fantasy, wet dream, christmas and birthday smashed together in a savage orgy of gratuitous violence. There was only one problem, It was a terrible film.
The plot and its development was truly awful. A band of highly skilled mercenaries are sent to a small South American island to overthrow a horribly stereotyped dictator. What? I thought Stallone had already done this in Rambo? Nevermind eh? As for the development there was no back story to any of the main characters which could have been pretty fun, no disgustingly violent flash backs from previous missions to increase the violence levels and everything seem to happen within the blink of an eye.
The script was bleak as shit for instance Stone cold treated me to such wonders as "you think you're a tough guy" and "you piece of trash". Full on cringe city. Admittedly some one liners were reasonably funny but in a terrible 80's action film sort of funny.
The acting was something else. I've seen every actor in that film act BETTER in other films. It's almost as if Sly asked everyone to become a worse actor for his film. It literally blew my mind. No one acted as badly as Mr Dolph Lundgren though, he was in another realm of terrible acting. I actually remember thinking to my self this HAS to be a joke, that's the best he has to offer? I think the absolute pinacle had to be Mickey Rourke and his character Tools little memoir of being in Burma or some fucked up place. I vaguely remember him saying something about being up to his knees in mud and blood, thinking he was going to die, getting out alive then watching some chick committing suicide and this lead to an enlightening line about saving the girl and saving your soul. I wish I could have made more effort with that recollection but it was so offensively terrible I chose to forget most of it.
There was even a point where some of the characters had genuine emotional problems one about a cauliflowered ear and the other about some chick. NO! NO! NO! Don't try and give these people real emotions they blow people in half for a living! I don't want to see Statham moping around about some girl with a new boyfriend I want to see more of him throwing knives into peoples throats and shooting people 15 times in the stomach to make sure they're dead.
Also has Jet Li's accent always been that awful?
However as my title suggests this truly is the best terrible film I've ever seen. The plot development was tragic but that lead to the action scenes coming around quicker. The acting was terrible but what action films have you ever seen with good acting in? Only war films have good acting and action in. Without the bad acting I would have been bitterly disappointed and as for the characters 'emotional side' it was dealt with quickly and effectively, after all who needs emotions when you have an AA-12?
So now we come to the best part, the violence, the ultra violence. Violence so glorious It makes you feel like a man, a real man the sort of man who revels in the thought of wrong do-ers getting just what they deserve in the form of 56 bullets to the torso. The fight scenes were bone crunchingly breath taking, everything was big, from the noise of a spine being busted on the floor right down to each individual punch. I would go into greater detail but to ruin the visual experience for someone who hasn't seen it would be a tragedy.
As for the combat it was a typical 80's bloodbath where the good guys didn't really need to aim and the bad guys (who are meant to be trained soldiers) cant hit a man stood 20 meters away. And of course more people are dying than actual bullets being fired. The explosions were borderline arousing and pretty much made me weep like a 10 year old and I spent most of the last 20 minutes going "whoa, FUCK".
If the film had not had its all star cast it would have been truly terrible, this was just a violent excuse to celebrate all the very best action heroes of the last 20 years and I for one think why not? This film was glorious for all the wrong reasons and will certainly go down an action favourite.
This ladies and gentlemen was ACTION 101.
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