Release Date – 8/13/2010
Barney Ross is the leader of a team of mercenaries. They are hired to do all the dirty work in foreign countries when the United States doesn’t want to formally get involved. His latest mission is to take down a General who is serving as dictator of a South American island nation. When he takes his right hand man, Lee Christmas, out to the island to scout out the scene, he finds out some Americans are involved with the General. He decides to avoid the job but can’t help think about the woman who begged for his help in these tough times… so of course off he goes back to save the day. This movie is sprinkled with awesome action scenes but the story and dialogue didn’t do much for me. It’s a poor man’s Rambo with way too many characters involved. But did I mention the action is AWESOME!
Sylvester Stallone is in his 60s for God’s sake. The man is a machine. Once again he is running through the jungle whooping ass (even a Rambo joke is made about how he loves the jungle). But Barney Ross was not a deep character like John Rambo, he’s kind of stale. Jason Statham is Lee Christmas, a younger version of Stallone, still with a lot of pep and a fetish for knives. The movie is pretty much about these two guys. But that doesn’t mean the supporting cast isn’t chock full of other muscle men. Jet Li is the odd man out, using his martial arts to make up for his small stature. Dolph Lundgren is a behemoth psycho who doesn’t always do what’s right according to Barney. Terry Crews loves his guns. Randy Couture is the intelligent wrestling brute. Not to mention small roles by Mickey Rourke as a former mercenary, Bruce Willis as the mysterious sarcastic prick who hires The Expendables and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Stallone’s rival in the mercenary business. The scene with Arnold, Bruce, and Sly together is great, although its only for 5 minutes. One liners and sarcasm are flying everywhere.
But hold on, doesn’t this film have bad guys? It sure does. General Garza is played by David Zayas (of Showtime’s Dexter). He is a ruthless dictator but not fully in charge of what’s going on in his own country. He’s being controlled by a wealthy American, James Munroe (Eric Roberts), who has his own agenda. Munroe’s bodyguard is none other than former WWE wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin. He’s pretty much just there to look tough and grimace at people. But he sure is the biggest badass in the movie. And of course the love interests. Charisma Carpenter for Statham and Giselle Itie for Stallone. See what I mean about too many characters? Crews and Couture barely got any screen time. Li and Lundgren had a feud that needed to expand more. Charisma Carpenter was HOT but pointless. It was character OVERLOAD!
Sly Stallone as writer and director had good intentions here. He wanted old school action with new and old action heroes mixed in. High energy, but low on story. I think he succeeds in making some damn fine action scenes mixed with several scenes of boredom. But you can rest assured there is enough macho ass kicking to satisfy the action fan. Stallone fights Austin. Li fights Lundgren. Couture fights Austin. Stallone fights Lundgren. Crews blows everything up. Statham is throwing knives everywhere. Explosion, explosion, explosion!!! The ending scene alone is worth the price of admission. It starts and ends with a bang but the middle had a little too much dialogue. I just kept thinking, WHERE ARE MY EXPLOSIONS!?
IMDB – 8.5/10
Rotten Tomatoes – 44%
Movie Wiseguys – 7/10