Expend4bles

2 outta 5

Expend4bles is the fourth movie in the franchise, as if the annoyingly nonsensically placed number 4 in the middle of the world Expendables wasn’t enough to clue you in. The series has always been about over the hill action stars going for one final ride, with scattershot results. The 2^nd movie is probably the best with a wild bunch of cameos and a solid villain performance. But the shine is starting to wear off and they can’t get a decent amount of ‘80s action vets here. The carnage and splatter are commendable, but there’s some dopey plotting decisions that make for a half-hearted return to a franchise that was at its best over a decade ago. The booms are decent, though.

Aging mercenary Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) is the leader of the guns for hire Expendables crew along with his second in command, Lee Christmas (Jason Statham). Barney is getting up there in years but he brings the crew at the request of the CIA agent Marsh (Andy Garcia) to take out a deadly terrorist, Suarto Rahmat (Iko Uwais). Unfortunately, the mission goes awry and, despite Christmas’ best efforts, Barney ends up killed. Now Christmas has been kicked off the team and the leader is his on again/off again girlfriend, Gina (Megan Fox). When Christmas can’t cut it at a regular job he goes on the hunt for Rahmat, finding a former Expendables member, Decha (Tony Jaa). This leads to a showdown on a terrorist tanker with Rahmat, Gina and her Expendables crew and Christmas and his new friend, with lots of messiness, a few twists, and the fate of the world at stake.

This movie gear shifts way, way too hard moving the lead from Stallone’s Barney to Statham’s Christmas with absolutely no subtlety whatsoever. Sure, it has always been a giant ensemble with Stallone at the centre and Statham is the sidekick. Here they unceremoniously bump Barney off within the first act in an awkward way. His plane gets shot down, he’s dead, that’s it. There is a darkly funny bit when all that was salvageable was Barney’s charred arm with his lucky ring attached, so they set it up as a memorial at the bar they frequent. At least when Stallone is on screen, he has a few amusing lines. But just dropping the action hero for the second banana isn’t a fun bait and switch, it’s just annoying. As expected, there are a few more twists about Barney’s fate, but it’s too little and too late. Statham has been fun in more than a few roles, but the script doesn’t give him much to do, instead settling for a generic action guy. There is one fun bit when Christmas takes on a job as security for a social media influencer that ends in a spectacularly messy way. Amusingly, Christmas can only hold down a regular job for about five minutes before he ends up pummeling his annoying boss.

There is a large ensemble here but nothing approaching the roster of the previous films. Jacob Scipio plays Galan, a member of the Expendables crew who is the son of a former member played by Antoino Banderas. He kind of looks like Banderas and he starts off as a motormouthed character like his father, but he gets mopey and silent. Overall, his character and the actor seem like a poor substitute for Banderas’ manic energy. Megan Fox as the new leader of the crew is a bit befuddling because the ethos of the Expendables series is that it features a bunch of over the hill action stars but does that mean that at 37 is Fox an over the hill action star? Also, the age difference between her and Statham playing a romantic couple is absurd. Probably only near a two decade age gap between Statham and Fox counts as him slumming it.

The only other characters returning to the crew are Dolph Lundgren’s Gunner and Randy Couture’s Toll Road, both of which have funny moments. Couture can’t stop talking about his cauliflower ear injury in a very long way, and he has a good quip when he says he was in the army so he can’t understand nautical direction terminology. Gunner has gone from broken drunk to sober man of patience, but he has a shockingly tasteless but funny moment when Gunner pounds back a flask of booze like Popeye downing spinach for courage. Martial arts star Tony Jaa as Christmas’ new friend is appropriately weird and has some good moves, and Uwais as the bad guy glowers menacingly and kicks ass. Garcia as the CIA spook who sends the Expendables on their mission throws in some levity in a dull exposition part and the third act lets Garcia chew scenery in a fun way.

Expend4bles does offer up a consistent action and delivers some messy kills, like schmucks getting flattened from falling from a high spot, or goons getting their heads exploded graphically. As the ad campaign is trumpeting the violence, it does deliver on that part. But the series has been better and has had a much stronger cast, and by kicking it’s lead to the curb to focus on the less interesting guy, Expendables has lost its messy charm.