The Expendables

Roger Ebert used his review of "Shaolin Soccer" as a vehicle to describe his theory of the star-rating system in movies. He said, "When you ask a friend if 'Hellboy' is any good, you're not asking if it's any good compared to 'Mystic River,' you're asking if it's any good compared to 'The Punisher.' And my answer would be, on a scale of one to four, if 'Superman' is four, then 'Hellboy' is three, and 'The Punisher' is two."

If I might be excused for unoriginality, the same theory can be applied here. "The Expendables," directed by Sylvester Stallone and featuring Stallon and a whole host of other tough guys, is a film that needs to be taken for what it's worth. Here is a film not comparable to "Superman," or "Gone With the Wind" or "The Exorcist" or "The Fog of War," but it's a film comparable to "Raiders of the Lost Ark," which is better than "The Expendables," or "Die Hard 2," which ranks at two stars to the three stars of "The Expendables." Several days before I saw "The Expendables," I watched "Wo Ai Ni (I Love You) Mommy," a documentary about a young Chinese girl adopted into an American family and a much more compelling movie. I have, however, just deliberately violated Ebert's rule. "The Expendables" and "Wo Ai Ni, Mommy" are not really comparable films; yes, perhaps they work better for different people, but they must be seen through different prisms.

Stallone is the leader of a group of mercenaries dubbed the Expendables, simply because, of course, they are expendable. They are tough, brutal (yet surprisingly sensitive) individuals. They have Austrian, British, Chinese, Swedish, Latin American, and Stallone accents. They are played by actors who have helped define the tough-guy action genre for decades: Jason Statham, Jet Li, Mickey Rourke, Dolph Lundgren. Also appearing are Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, and Eric Roberts. To add to the delight, there are simultaneous cameos by Bruce Willis and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his first appearance in six years.

The Expendables are hired to remove a general who has led a coup de'tat on the fictional island of Vilena. This general is the puppet to a merciless ex-CIA agent James Munroe (Roberts). (Say what you will about the film being stupid, but intelligent viewers will recognize not only the ironies of the villain's name related to the president whose Doctrine dealt with Latin America but also the plot's similarities to the Noreiga situation of the late 1980s. Additionally, it appears Stallon has heeded Mickey Rourke's plea for directors to star hiring Roberts again.)

One thing about the film that struck me is that it is not as violent as I expected. Indeed, there were decapitations, exploding bodies, and knives in throats, but it's not nausea-inducing. The result is that the movie is quite fun, despite some things that are troublesome. One is a silly moment at the film's resolution, and another is the violence towards women. There is only one female character in this whole movie (thereby violating the Bechtel Test), and she's beaten up pretty badly for no logical reason. Additionally and expectedly, the final act of the film falls victim to a ridiculous amount of annoying explosions.

It could be expected that such a film, with an unbelievable amount of testosterone and improbable sequences, would be labeled as "dumb." There are dumber things in our world today, but this is not a type of "dumb" that makes me lose sleep at night.