Review: The Expendables

Hey guys, this review comes courtesy of our friend Beki Thomas, who is giving us a ladies perspective on the all male action flick – The Expendables.  

Ok, I was hesitant to watch this film, don’t get me wrong I am a big film goer and will usually give anything a chance, but I just don’t get tough guy shoot ‘em up movies. Nor may I add – am I a fan of the dropped lipped Italian Stallion. However curiosity got the better of me, and let me tell you – I’m glad it did! So, the big reason for writing this is, I want to encourage women/men whoever – to give this a chance. Sadly, there were a total of four ladies sat in the very packed screening, there were even a few blokes sat alone and some who looked liked they’d asked their dads to tag along as their Friday night date. So lady’s make sure you say “yes” when your man begs you to go! (What can I say? It’s the male equivalent to Sex and the City)

Right, so the film itself is directed by Sylvester Stallone and I know I’m going to hear a few boo’s here but I was just never into the whole ‘Rocky’ thing. Expendables thankfully – is nothing like that! What we have here is a high powered, action packed thrill ride with lots of laughs and includes a bloody great cast. The film opens with a pretty rubbish hostage scene, a group of bad guys aboard a ship going about naughty business and the expendables come in and kick their arses, from that very minute you’ve got a clear idea who the bad guy are. At this point – I wasn’t impressed, there was a few funny one liners but it didn’t quite ‘do it’ for me. What this film doesn’t do, is get too involved, It doesn’t give you a huge crappy sob story for each of the guys. They’re basically a bunch of dudes who‘ve worked together for a while, who take jobs to kill people. That simple, sounds lame? Don’t worry, It’s not!

I was really hoping to hate the Barney Ross (Sly) and Lee Christmas’s (Jason Statham) double act but I loved it! Now, I’m sat thinking – why has never been done before? A bald rugged cockney geezer and an aging but still hot Italian American, I mean surely this is science 101 right? I know you’ve probably not bought into this yet, but, it’s beautiful – trust me, take the rough with the smooth ladies, it’s like chocolate with without the calories content! Jason has a few cheeky one liners which normally I’d roll my eyes at, but he manages to walk that fine line and make them come across pretty funny. Throw in little Jet Li of, and you have a bag of awesomeness (his little speech about how much he deserves a pay rise, because he is the smallest and has to work twice as hard – is very funny! I wanted to pop him in my pocket and take him home. The rest of the guys each have their own little piece of charisma – forget the A team I’m taking home the E team! (See what I did there?)

Really, Expendables is not all about aging men with tattoos although Mickey Rourke plays the perfect tattooist, in fact he really looks right at home in his little parlour of hot women ,hot motorbikes and even hotter “jobs”. The soundtrack is full of old American get you rockin’ classics to guide you along this easy to watch, strange little mixture of men and machine guns.  The church scene which was purely a “Planet Hollywood move” containing Bruce Willis, Sly and Arnie… well, I thought….. here comes the ‘cringe moment’. It is actually pretty funny, Sly and Arnie are like a pair of battling bitches , as I can imagine a lot of us would expect them to be. Willis line as he leaves the church – “what’s up with that guy? He wants to be fucking president” was hilarious.

Again from a woman’s point of view the action scenes are not too compacted with crap so you lose your sense of direction. The fighting is all blunt and too the point, it came across almost so real that I couldn’t tuck into pick up my popcorn! By the halfway point, I was actually interested and invested in Sly’s characters. The bad guy played by Eric Roberts, is played with an angst that I almost wanted to crawl into the screen and kick the guys arse myself.

All in all I came out of this movie very, very pleasantly surprised. It was an old Hollywood action dream that could have ended in disaster! Yes, there is a ton of cheese -but this cheese- tasted great!

Beki’s Score        **** (4 out of 5)