The Expendables

About a year back, my boss told me, “The era of the metrosexual man is over. The Alpha Male is back”. Well sir, it would definitely seem that you were bang on. The Expendables is probably the nth movie this year which completely proves your theory. Suddenly, one seems to be getting a slew of all out action movies that was not the case about a couple of years back. This year itself has seen quite a few of these “Man Movies” chief amongst them being The A Team. The response from arguably the king of action, his highness, his holiness, Sylvester Stallone is to get together his own crack team who go by the name of The Expendables.


The Expendables are a group of mercenaries led by Barney Ross (Stallone). They specialize in covert military operations which countries do not want to be seem involved in or find it difficult to manage. The team comprises of Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), Ying Yang (Jet Li), Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundgren) and a couple of other trigger happy team members. The are also ably supported by one of their ex team members and not main contact point, Tool (Mickey Rourke). The movie starts with an operation in the Gulf of Aden where a container ship has been held by Somalian pirates who are now demanding a ransom of $3 million. The Expendables quickly address the issue with no harm caused to the hostages. In the bargain, however, they find out the dark side of Gunner who insists of continue the carnage with his own verson of barbarism. This leads to Yang trying to stop him and eventually Barney has to intervene. Gunner is politely asked to exit the team which he doesn’t take too kindly to but has not other choice.

The movie then proceeds to introduce an agent who goes by the name of church (Bruce Willis) who is presumably a CIA Agent who wants to give yet another covert job to one of two teams. One being The Expendables. The other team is lead by the missing link in the Planet Hollywood Team which completes the 2 mins of attempted humour of getting our 3 vintage heroes to share screen space for probably the first time. The Expendables get the job for a princely sum of $ 5 million which involves a seek and destroy operation of a small, otherwise inconsequential island called Vilena which is supposed to off the coast of Miami somewhere in the Caribbean. The credits however reveal that it is a location in Brazil. Quite exotic nevertheless.

The exotic nature is however not limited to the locale. It also extends to the Sandra (Giselle Itie – a small time south America actress) the sizzling hot daughter of the General of Vilena. Now Sandra is the contact point given to Barney by Church. The target is the general. Now our boys with brawn are a wee bit confused about this entire turn of events. How can the contact be a blood relation? I also forgot to mention a 2nd more important target - James Munroe (Eric Roberts) who is a rogue CIA agent and in cahoots with the general and intends to make a truck load of money smuggling snort. Our men are supposed to destroy this operation.

Despite the heavily loaded star cast, The expendables kind of flatters to deceive. One would have expected the quality of action to have been far superior and not random trigger happiness. Yes, it is a thrill to see these demi gods of action together on screen but they should have been given more substance to work with. Stallone probably had labeled this as his pet project – something to do before I fade away – and hence did this. But give the same project in the hands of a Jerry Bruckheimer OR John Woo and one would be able to notice a perceivable difference. Now I wasn’t expecting an Oscar award nomination when I picked up the tickets but I did expect a reasonable story line. I wasn’t aware of Stallone being the director or I would have toned my expectations down significantly. The dialogues for e.g. are extremely cheesy and drew very little laughter from an otherwise belligerent audience.

The Expendables is yet another case of an actor not being a half decent director or movie maker. Sly Stallone should stick to acting in super action flicks. We all know he is still fit enough and probably capable of having another Rocky. Or maybe he should have made Rocky Balboa his swansong. My guess is the latter. I give The Expendables 5 on 10.