Time: 104 Minutes
Age Rating: R16 – Violence & offensive language
Cast:
Jason Statham as Lee Christmas
Sylvester Stallone as Barney Ross
Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson as Easy Day
Megan Fox as Gina
Dolph Lundgren as Gunner Jensen
Tony Jaa as Decha
Iko Uwais as Suarto Rahmat
Randy Couture as Toll Road
Jacob Scipio as Galan
Levy Tran as Lash
Andy García as Marsh
Director: Scott Waugh

Armed with every weapon they can get their hands on, the Expendables are the world’s last line of defense and the team that gets called when all other options are off the table.

The Expendables franchise has been a little strange. The first movie aimed to be a throwback to 80s action flicks, with an ensemble of action stars including Sylvester Stallone and Dolph Lundgren. The results were rather mixed, but it was still mildly entertaining. The second movie was a notable improvement, and was everything the first movie should’ve been. The third movie however was quite a misfire with many poor decisions, including but not limited to a PG-13 rating, ditching the R rating of the previous movies. The mixed to negative reception of the third movie has meant that the fourth movie has been in development for some time. Unfortunately, the reactions to the movie were less than stellar. It definitely should’ve been way better than it turned out to be, but I still enjoyed it.

The writing is very average for an action flick, with not much to it. It’s pretty limited in terms of locations, after the opening sequence, the bulk of the rest of the movie takes place on a large ship, and I wish they had more variety. There’s also a very predictable twist villain reveal. Still, I had fun, and the movie is fast paced and over the top enough to provide some entertainment, along with it being kept short at an hour and 40 minutes.

Once again there’s an ensemble cast, but thankfully has a smaller cast compared to the third movie, and so it isn’t too crowded. The cast themselves do have some good back and forth with each other. Sylvester Stallone is typically the lead actor in these movies, but he takes a back seat in this movie, leaving Jason Statham to take up the lead role. I do like the added focus on him, and Statham is a very reliable and solid lead. Tony Jaa and Iko Uwais (the latter of whom plays one of the main villains) are also good in their parts. Unfortunately, they and the rest of the cast are fairly underutilised. A consequence of the increased Statham focus is that the rest of the cast really don’t get as much attention.

Scott Waugh’s direction isn’t that good here. Like most of the previous movies, Expen4bles has a budget of 100 million dollars, which is absurd because those movies look way better than this one, including the first movie which was only $80 million. The latest movie in this series actually looks like a direct to DVD movie. The CGI has always been weirdly bad for these movies, however it is astonishingly terrible here, even fires and explosions look amateurish. The action is fine enough but a step down from much of the action of the previous movies. There are too many cuts for its own good, but occasionally the action is good, such as the fight scene between Jason Statham and Iko Uwais. A major criticism of the third movie was the PG-13 rating and so the fourth movie very much goes back to having an R rating. While this is preferable to what they did with the third movie since it at least gives the violence some sort of punch, once again they rely on using incredibly fake looking CGI blood, and it somehow looks even worst of all here.

Expend4bles is enjoyable enough with the action and the cast, but is very flawed, especially with the generic plot and awful CGI. I still liked it more than the third movie, but I really recommend it if you don’t like any of the movies in this series.