Stallone turns 'Expendables' into brain-dead bloodbath

Posted August 11, 2010 11:00 pm

Dann Gire

What's up with Sylvester Stallone's face?

The star, co-writer and director of "The Expendables" looks as if he's had his head reconstructed with Silly Putty, and his eyebrows have been embroidered on to his skull by an inebriated seamstress.

Maybe it's just the soldier-for-hire he plays. If he runs out of bullets, he can always scare his enemies away.

But I digress.

"The Expendables" will go down in Hollywood history as the greatest waste of testosterone ever splattered on the silver screen.

This ridiculous, brain-dead and viciously violent mercenary action film assembles the largest group of major tough guys ever to escape from the 1980s with their AARP cards intact: Stallone, Dolph Lundgren, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Eric Roberts and Mickey Rourke.

Hey! What happened to Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme? Too busy to stop by for a roundhouse kick or two?

Before "Terminator" and "Die Hard" fans start drooling, it should be noted that the Governator and Willis appear in "The Expendables" for about as long as you see them in the coming attraction trailers.

After trading quips, Schwarzenegger and Willis wisely disappear for the rest of the movie before it deteriorates from nostalgic cuteness into chaotic schlock.

Willis plays CIA operative Mr. Church. He hires grizzled Barney Ross (Stallone) and his merry band of mercenaries to take out General Garza (David Zayas), another ruthless dictator of a small South American country called Vilena.

Ross assembles his crew: blade-crazy Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), Asian assassin Ying Yang (Li), martial artist Toll Road (Randy Couture) and tough guy Hale Caesar (Terry Crews).

But not super sniper Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), whose drug habit has made him increasingly unreliable.

"I can't trust you!" Ross tells Jensen, who now has an excuse to slink off to work against his former comrades by joining the other side run by an oily renegade CIA snake named James Munroe (Roberts).

Munroe views Gen. Garza as his puppet, and Munroe's brutal chief enforcer Paine (Steve Austin) flogs local citizens to produce the opium he sells.

After Ross and Company exhaust a warehouse of ammunition and bombs fighting for Garza's strip, they realize they can't win, and take off for home. They leave without their local contact Sandra (Giselle Itie), a principled, pretty revolutionary who creates painted portraits while trying to overthrow Munroe and Garza, even if she is the general's daughter.

"Your daughter paints, too!" Munroe shouts accusingly at Garza. "This is how it starts!"

Action movie fans who don't like plots and character development slowing down the video-game-inspired killing sprees might like "The Expendables."

Its wince-inducing dialogue (co-written by Stallone and "Doom" scripter Dave Callaham) and graphic dismemberment of bad guys shamelessly play to the lowest common denominator.

Believe it or not, that leaves Mickey Rourke to deliver the movie's only moment of genuine drama. As Tool, a tattoo artist and former mercenary, Rourke remembers seeing a young woman about to commit suicide, but does nothing to stop it.

"Here was one I could have saved, but didn't," he says in a voice saturated with regret. "Maybe she could have saved what is left of my soul."

This sets up the reason that Ross and his mercenaries return to Vilena for free - to rescue Sandra, the story's symbol of purity and virtue.

But that's all Sandra is, a curiously sexless symbol.

As the director, Stallone never establishes genuine bonds between any of his characters, so Ross' reason to return to Vilena for one final violent bloodbath feels as fake as, uh, his Silly Putty nose.

<p class="factboxheadblack">"The Expendables"</p>

<p class="News"><b>Starring:</b> Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis</p>

<p class="News"><b>Directed by:</b> Sylvester Stallone</p>

<p class="News"><b>Other:</b> A Lionsgate release. Rated R for language and extreme violence. 103 minutes</p>

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