By the time a film series gets up to part 4 (or is it 5?) you have to start wondering if there maybe isn't something worth looking at. And so it is with The Expendables. Finally I decided to take a look... despite the mixed reviews.
What you get isn't so much an action film as a trip down memory lane. If you never saw the Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis films of the 1980's then you will probably just wonder why there are some old guys running round with Jason Statham and Jet Li.
As you might expect, there's plenty of fighting and not a lot of acting here. Although I think I'd have to single out Mickey Rourke as the opposite: he doesn't do any fighting but puts in a good performance as Sly's brother (is that brother, or bro? ... it doesn't really matter, I guess).
The action scenes are fun but nothing special, in the present day. So for me it is the nostalgia that saves the day. The cheesy one-liners. The hulking bad guys who kick the crap out of the heroes until the last minute. The improbable escapes. Bad guys who can fire 1000 rounds without hitting anyone. Good guys who can drop a dozen baddies stone dead with 3 bullets and a medium sized pocket knife.
There actually is the thin thread of a story to hang the action onto. And I assume that the obvious hooks will be used to pull in the other old-time hero guys as the series goes along.
Will I be checking out part 2, at least? Hell yeah!
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