Starring: Jason Statham, Sylvester Stallone, 50 Cent, Megan Fox, Dolph Lundgren, Tony Jaa, Iko Uwais, Randy Couture, Jacob Scipio, Levy Tran and Andy Garcia. 'Written' by Kurt Wimmer, Tad Daggerhart and Max Adams from a story by Spenser Choen, Kurt Wimmer and Tad Daggerhart and based on characters created by David Callaham. Budget $100 million. Running time 104 minutes.
You know how it is, you wait ages for a really shit film to come along and then everyone involved with Expend4balls squats over you and slowly squeezes out a 104 minute long Boston Steamer right in the middle of your face and all your dreams are answered and you wonder why you constantly aim so low.
The plot, "there's a plot?" sees Barnaby (Stallone) and Christmas (Statham) and their chums butcher everyone in the world with a variety of guns, knives, axes, rockets and stuff. A mysterious baddy revealed to be Andy Garcia in the end, but who starts off as a good guy, hires another baddy played by Tony Jaa to steal some nuclear detonators so they can start WWWIII and only Barnaby and Christmas can stop them. Trouble is Barnaby is killed stone dead in the first 10 minutes and Christmas is blamed for the Expendables' mission failing and he's fired from the team and his girlfriend the truly awful Megan Fox takes over Barnaby's role of boss. Then the Expendables are sent by Andy Garcia to attack a ship which has the bomb. The ship is being disguised by the baddies to look like an American aircraft carrier so the Russians will retaliate and start WWWIII. Naturally it's a trap and the Expendables are captured. Luckily, Christmas has given his girlfriend a big knife with a tracking bug and he manages to track them down and leads a one-man rescue mission killing everybody until it's only him and Garcia left to fight to the death while the atom bomb only has 4 minutes to go before exploding. Just then Barnaby turns up in a helicopter chain-guns Garcia into bloody pieces, cuts the ship in half with missiles and rescues Christmas just before the ship sinks and explodes 'safely' underwater and everybody lives happily ever after. It turns out that Barnaby faked his death.
Oh shit! Sorry, I should have added a SPOILER ALERT to the above but forgot until now. I hope revealing that Garcia is the mysterious baddy and that Stallone isn't really dead and comes back at the end doesn't spoil the film for anyone.
Look, this is a ugly, crappy, stupid, shitty film. Most of it is filmed against digital backgrounds, Statham usually dependable is utterly expendable in this, in fact he appears as bored with the whole thing as his gun barrel (geddit it?). Megan Fox is required to do nothing more than swear, look sexy, and hit her mark when smiling and jogging from one place to the other. Which is a good thing because on the strength of this she has absolutely zero acting ability. And her make-up is so thick not a single wrinkle or crease marks its surface. It is utterly impossible to accept her 1D character as the leader of an elite squad of lethal mercenaries, and when you consider she's joined on screen by 50 Cent that's really saying something.
If you wanted a one word review than I'd say, 'shit'.
Shit. Shit. Shit. It's one massive crap fest, not one single good guy dies in this film, not one. At one point in this awful film a character with cauliflower ears is stabbed through the side with the world's biggest knife and so has to sit out the final showdown and that's it for fatalities. Oh, oh, oh! I've just remembered walking plank of wood 50 Cent, a man with less than that in sense utters the immortal line "That's what I'm talking 'bout."
Dolph Lundgren returns to literally sit this one out too, in so far that his character spends his entire screen time either sat on a crate or lying prone while he shoots his gun which has special prescription lens because he's now so old he needs glasses. I shit you not.
The baddies are dispatched with every weapon known to man and despite outnumbering our band of heroes at least a million to one don't manage to even graze one of them with a bullet.
At one point in this incredible shit show of a film, The Stath causes the supertanker to do a 90 degree turn by dropping the anchor and turning the steering wheel in the opposite direction.
Hang on, I've just remembered that our villain, the fore-mentioned Andy Garcia's character, is on the actual boat with the actual ticking atomic bomb, which is counting down to actually explode – you know an atomic bomb exploding, a bomb which traditionally has quite a large blast radius. So, with just seven minutes to go, before it explodes he's not only still standing on the boat ordering his men to kill Christmas and the others rather than, you know try and fly him and his 50 odd men off the boat before it explodes! But he also throws away the kill switch. What the actual 'what'!?
The cgi is frankly some of the worst I've ever seen in a so-called big budget movie, in fact barring the odd exterior shot the whole film looks as if it's been shot on a sound stage so bad is the digital backdrops. The action sequences are so generic, bland and repetitive it makes Expendables 3 look like a masterpiece.
At the end of this crap fest, Christmas asks Barnaby how he faked his death and he explains and it's truly appalling. Earlier in the film, Barnaby forces Christmas to fight a biker gang so he can retrieve his favourite ring which he lost in a card game to a man called The Shrimp, who's very short. It turns out that when the plane that Barnaby is flying is shot down in the beginning of the film, he drags the unconscious Shrimp out of a closet sticks him in the pilot's seat, wedges his black cap on his head, sticks the same ring back on his hand then bails out leaving the terrified man, who's done literally nothing wrong to die in his place.
Dolph Lundgren returns to literally sit this one out too, in so far that his character spends his entire screen time either sat on a crate or lying prone while he shoots his gun which has special prescription lens because he's now so old he needs glasses. I shit you not.
The baddies are dispatched with every weapon known to man and despite outnumbering our band of heroes at least a million to one don't manage to even graze one of them with a bullet.
At one point in this incredible shit show of a film, The Stath causes the supertanker to do a 90 degree turn by dropping the anchor and turning the steering wheel in the opposite direction.
Hang on, I've just remembered that our villain, the fore-mentioned Andy Garcia's character, is on the actual boat with the actual ticking atomic bomb, which is counting down to actually explode – you know an atomic bomb exploding, a bomb which traditionally has quite a large blast radius. So, with just seven minutes to go, before it explodes he's not only still standing on the boat ordering his men to kill Christmas and the others rather than, you know try and fly him and his 50 odd men off the boat before it explodes! But he also throws away the kill switch. What the actual 'what'!?
The cgi is frankly some of the worst I've ever seen in a so-called big budget movie, in fact barring the odd exterior shot the whole film looks as if it's been shot on a sound stage so bad is the digital backdrops. The action sequences are so generic, bland and repetitive it makes Expendables 3 look like a masterpiece.
At the end of this crap fest, Christmas asks Barnaby how he faked his death and he explains and it's truly appalling. Earlier in the film, Barnaby forces Christmas to fight a biker gang so he can retrieve his favourite ring which he lost in a card game to a man called The Shrimp, who's very short. It turns out that when the plane that Barnaby is flying is shot down in the beginning of the film, he drags the unconscious Shrimp out of a closet sticks him in the pilot's seat, wedges his black cap on his head, sticks the same ring back on his hand then bails out leaving the terrified man, who's done literally nothing wrong to die in his place.
The only good thing this film has is the fact its score is in its title.
The poster claims that 'they'll die when they're dead.' Sadly for the audience that
doesn't come soon enough.
4/10 (for Megan Fox's pert nipples in the final scene)
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