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The Expendables

February 27th, 2011 · Posted by Skuds in Life · No Comments · Life

Following an afternoon spent haemorrhaging money at the opticians, we watched The Expendables on DVD on Saturday evening.  It is almost a dictionary definition of ‘star-studded’ and boasts a cast featuring Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Micky O’Rourke, Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li, Jason Statham and Steve Austin.  An action film with some of the biggest names in action films in it – what can possibly go wrong?Well…  perhaps having a bit more of a plot might have helped.  The basic premise was a gang of mercenaries doing what Arnie did all on his own in Commando: going to a dictator-run island to rescue a girl.

I’m still a little unsure whether anybody forming a gang of mercenaries or a special forces squad or whatever would go for having a martial arts expert, a knife-thrower, someone with a heavy weapon, a sniper and so on but that seems to be the template for all such films wight from the Magnificent Seven to Predator.  They never seem to make enough of the fact that, probably, everybody would be able to do everything to a decent level of competency.

And I’m sure they wouldn’t also end up with such comedy names as Hale Caesar.

The film has plenty of action of course, but maybe too much.  It got a bit tedious towards the end.  I still find it hard to believe that one bloke with a couple of pistols could run past a dozen other blokes with machine guns who are shooting at him and not get hit at least once.

Worst of all, the film’s advertising is a bit misleading.   On the box it says “the most awesome action cast ever assembled”.   Probably true, but Arnie, Bruce Willis and Micky O’Rourke don’t actually see any action and Arnie and Bruce effectively just have cameo roles. Of the actual gang two members are relatively unknown (in the UK anyway): Randy Couture and Terry Crews being (I think) ex-sportsmen.

Still, it could have been worse.  Terry Crews’ role had previously been offered to Wesley Snipes, Forrest Whittaker and 50 Cent.  Other actors approached for the film, apparently, were Steven Seagal, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Kurt Russell.

If only they had spent less time chasing big names and more on developing characters for them.  Still it was entertaining enough and I’ll probably watch the sequel.

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