Ingemar wrote:It could have been a love letter to the fans who have been starved of 80's style action for decades.
It was none of these things.
Actually it was that thing you just said. The love-letter to the fans of 80's style action movies. You even said yourself that the last part of the movie is basically just like Commando. That proves the point! How can this movie be not an 80's style action movie if you said yourself that it is exactly like one?
It was just a standard action movie played completely straight.
Again, yeah, duh! That was the entire point of the movie! Dolph Lundgren even said ""It's an old-school, kick-*** action movie where people are fighting with knives and shooting at each other." Stallone had said many times that there just weren't any big action movies like there were in the 80's, and this movie was meant to be just that.
Now again, is it as good as Commando or Predator or Cobra? No, of course not, but so what? That doesn't make it bad. That's like saying okay, Citizen Kane is like the greatest movie ever made, but Predator isn't Citizen Kane so Predator sucks. No, that's stupid logic. Predator is awesome even if it isn't as good as Citizen Kane. The Expendables is good even if it isn't as good as some of the other 80's movies.
I agree with Spoony here when he says that Mickey Rourke easily has the best role in this movie. The unfortunate thing is that Rourke is not a part of any of the action and the tone of his surprisingly well written, well acted lines is a major departure from the rest of the movie and cast.
Okay, agreed, Mickey Rourke is definitely the best role hands-down. However, Dolph Lundgren had an amazing role too, and he played it well. And Jet Li fought him. Which was awesome, and anyone saying otherwise just flat-out hates action movies, there's no two ways about it. You cannot say you love action movies if you don't think that scene was totally awesome.
But this movie doesn't take it far enough and being the mediocre piece of work it is, I didn't expect it to.
The movie wasn't about the dictator, although that was a nice touch. The movie was about the team, not him. He was just there as more or less a way to show "Hey this guy in the suit is totally evil."
Finally, ask yourself this question: Would you see this movie if it didn't have those big name actors? Or if only one of those actors were present? If that were the case, "Expendables" would be a direct-to-video flop.
That proves nothing. You're basically saying "Hey if this movie wasn't this movie would you see it?" I don't know, it doesn't matter. They're in this movie, and that's what matters. You might as well ask "Hey in Last Action Hero when they were in the video store and there was that cardboard cutout with Sylvester Stallone in Terminator 2, would he have been good in it?" Well he wasn't, so what's the point of thinking about it? Would Citizen Kane have been as heralded if it had the same cast and scenes but a different script? What kind of question is that?
Basically, this movie is awesome. It could have been more awesome, I do not deny this. I'm not saying it's the best action movie ever. That'd be dumb of me to say, because it clearly isn't. However, it IS an awesome action movie, and it is definitely, DEFINITELY worth the money. That's just the bottom line. If you want Shakespeare or if you want Commando, you're not going to get it. If you want an awesome action movie with a ton of really manly and awesome dudes, then you will definitely not be disappointed unless you just flat-out hate action movies. In fact, I'm pretty sure that anyone who gives this a negative review pretty much just hates action movies. So why are they reviewing it?
I can do that too. The Sound of Music is totally boring and therefore it sucks and nobody should watch it because it's so stupid, no one would sing all the time like that, ugh it's so bad, don't bother.