THE EXPENDABLES

 

The Expendables is an action flick fan's ultimate wet dream as it stars many of the main action stars of the eighties, the nineties and today, including Sylvester Stallone (who also directed the flick), Dolph Lungren (who, of course, co-starred with Stallone in the fourth Rocky flick), Jet Li and current action star Jason Statham (who starred in the earlier-reviewed Death Race), among others. Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger appear in cameos. Mickey Rourke (who starred in the earlier-reviewed flicks 9 1/2 Weeks and The Wrestler) plays a minor--but, I think, memorable--role in this flick. Anyway, Stallone stars as head of a group of elite mercenaries who are "hired" by Willis to take out a Latin dictator along with a rogue CIA agent played by Eric Roberts (similar to the "baddie" role he played in the earlier-reviewed Batman flick The Dark Knight). But the plot of this flick is rather negligible. The main reason to view this particular flick is to watch all these action stars kicking ass & taking names of which they do PLENTY of in this flick! If you're a fan of old-style action flicks, like myself, then you definitely WON'T be disappointed by The Expendables! Really, about the only thing that kind of marred this flick for me is that sometimes the action scenes tended to be a trite dark to the point where it was kind of hard to tell, at least for me, who was doing what to whom. Another thing that kind of marred this flick for me was the scene where former pro-wrestler Steve Austin--who plays Roberts's right-hand man--strikes a woman and then "waterboards" her. Austin, for those of you not in the know, was arrested and placed on one year's probation for domestic violence against his ex-wife. Why in the world someone who was arrested and placed on one year's probation for committing domestic violence against his ex-wife would accept a movie role like this is beyond me. I mean, that's kind of like fallen football star O.J. Simpson writing a book wherein he claimed that he didn't murder his ex-wife but, if he did, here's how he'd do it. (Oh, wait a second . . .)