Expendables, The

If there is one thing Sylvester Stallone knows a lot about, it is action movies. Not only has he stared in action packed blockbusters, he is also writing and directing them as seen with his new film The Expendables. Based upon the book of the same name by Dave Callaham, Stallone worked with Callaham in writing the screenplay for the film. If a film is going to be written, directed, and starred in by Sly, you can bet he will recruit some other big names to join the fight with him on screen. There is barely enough room on the movie poster to list all the A-list action heroes in The Expendables. Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, Steve Austin, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, and Mickey Rourke all lend a hand to making The Expendables the star-packed action adventure Stallone wanted to make. There are also two notable cameos in the picture in a scene including Stallone, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Barney Ross (Stallone) heads up a motley crew of weapons and military experts who work freelance out of Tool’s (Rourke) bike and tattoo shop. Lee Christmas (Statham) is a knife expert and is experiencing problems in his love life. Yin Yang (Li) is a martial arts expert who is always looking for more money. The group is rounded out by heavy weapons specialist Hale Caesar (Krews), explosives expert Toll Road (Couture), and sniper Gunner Jensen (Lundgren). When a mysterious man named Mr. Church (Willis) hires the Expendables to kill the dictator of a small South American island, Ross and Christmas head out to the country for a reconnaissance mission and find a little more than they were looking for. Not only is the dictator one bad dude, but an American and former CIA agent named James Munroe (Roberts) is running the island as his own personal cocaine manufacturing plant. While there, Ross and Christmas also meet a young woman named Sandra (played by the beautiful Giselle Itie’) as their contact. She risks life and limb to get the two men off the island with their lives after they are discovered. Now that she has been revealed as an enemy to Munroe’s operation she has to leave the island or certainly be killed, but at the last minute she stays behind to help fight for her country. Ross becomes interested in Sandra’s story, all his life he has fought for the highest bidder, and she is fighting for a cause and a purpose above the almighty dollar. Ross decides that he must return to the island to help her and hopefully to help rid himself of his own demons. Not the kind to let one of their own go it alone, the rest of the Expendables go with Ross on his mission. But five men against a dictator and his army and a ruthless ex-CIA agent, might make this mission the last one they will ever attempt.

Although The Expendables isn’t one of the greatest stories out there, it was still very entertaining. Stallone does not disappoint his fans with plenty of well choreographed action scenes, the next one bigger than the last. His core group of men played by him, Statham, Li, Krews, Courture, and Lundgren are the main players in the film. Each man is quite a colorful character, but they still maintain qualities that keep them human, like the average Joe. Eric Roberts has always played a great bad guy and he doesn’t disappoint as the evil James Munroe. The Expendables is a little light on the storyline, though the non-stop action packed blood soaked scenes are enough entertainment to make any action film fan happy.