Every label from middling to just plain bad has been saddled to “The Expendables” franchise, almost from the start. So there’s little sense piling onto what probably will be the last one — to make it to theaters, at least.
Although “Expend4bles” (“Expendables 4”) attracted a couple of major martial arts cinema figures — Thai legend Tony Jaa, Indonesian action icon Iko Uwais — a simple glance down the cast list inspires barely a shrug.
Where the third film, which came out back in 2014, had Sly Stallone and Jason Statham joined by Harrison Ford, Jet Li, Antonio Banderas, Wesley Snipes, Mel Gibson, Ronda Rousey and Schwarzenegger, “Expen4bles” can boast of Megan Fox, 50 Cent somebody named Jacob Scipio, along with series holdovers Dolph Lundrgren and Randy Couture.
Even throwing in Andy Garcia, that’s a STEEP discount.
The writing is similarly cut-rate. The action climax borrows from several films and mostly resembles a half-assed riff on “Tomorrow Nerver Dies.” There’s not a half-bad joke in it. Just bad ones.
“Take two Xanax and pretend you’re happy with your life!”
Yeah, no wonder the studio folk signing off on dreck like this are dreaming of an AI-generated script future. They can’t tell the difference.
The action beats have a nonsensical excitement to them. The chases are competently shot and edited and the fight scenes still play.
But it’s all so weary and overfamiliar, giving one the sense that many involved stopped trying on the first take or third rewrite. It’s just gassed.
The one thing that intrigued me was a piece of plot illogic the size of “Indiana Jones isn’t really necessary in ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,'” a bit of script analysis by a “Big Bang Theory” screenwriter that got on the air and entered the cultural debate, driving fanboys and fangirls nuts.
The “solution” to the impending calamity in the long, drawn-out climax to “Expen4bles” is so nakedly obvious we expect everybody or somebody to stop dilly-dallying with a clock literally ticking down towards armageddon and take that the proper measures.
And they don’t.
Throw in the anti-climax of it all, the nonsensical twists, the sure knowledge that Fox, Lundgren, Jaa and especially 50 Cent have never become passable actors and dueling opening scenes — a murderous raid in Libya alternating with a heartlessly violent bar brawl to recover a ring lost fair and square in a bet — and “Expend4bles” becomes the most “Expendable” actionar of the lot.
Rating: R. strong/bloody violence throughout, language and sexual material.
Cast: Jason Statham, Megan Fox, Tony Jaa, Andy Garcia, 50 Cent, Iko Uwais. Randy Couture, Levy Tran, Dolph Lundgren, and Sylvester Stallone.
Credits: Directed by Scott Waugh, scripted by Kurt Wimmer, Tad Daggerhart and Max Adams. A Lionsgate release.
Running time: 1:43
