The Expendables franchise is no longer with us. These films are meant to serve as an homage to the silly, low-rent action movies of the 80s and 90s, when many of our biggest action stars made their names. But if the franchise is going to continue after a nine-year hiatus, Expendables 4 (officially called Expend4bles) will need a significant change in how it works — kind of like how Bad Boys for Life added a dash of self-awareness. .
Interestingly, Expendables 4 borrows a number of elements from that third Bad Boys movie – such as the casting of that film’s supporting villain, Jacob Scipio. “Old Man Needs Glasses” subplot with Dolph Lundgren. The addition of a whole group of young people to contrast with the old hats. And a fighter who doesn’t want to fight because it’s traumatic for him. However, Expendfourbles does not manage any kind of self-reflection. However, this movie has about 20 minutes of really solid action that almost makes the remaining hour of the movie and the change in overly incoherent plots worth sitting through. About.
This fourth Expendables film sees a team led by Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) and Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), but without the franchise’s past big names, take on a mysterious terrorist known as Mercy (The Raid). Iko Uwais), who is carrying out a standard “steal an atomic weapon to start World War III” villain plot. The Expendables try to stop him from stealing some high-tech fantasy contraptions, but things go awry and they lose one of their own in the process of failing the mission.
Through it all, Expendables 4 generally has a more than capable story – all the while, there’s the issue of Mercy having a secret boss named Ocelot, who’s sort of Barney Stallone’s old personal nemesis. It’s basically a spy story, with classified files and tricks to take out Ocelot, but it’s all nonsense. No one spies in this movie, no one drops any clues about Ocelot’s identity, and the movie never even doubts who Ocelot really is.
Every time someone brings up this spy stuff, which thankfully isn’t that often. Did I miss something? No, they’re just talking about something that makes no sense and isn’t supported by the rest of the movie. And that’s the same for the non-action parts of the movie, which are so badly shot and edited that it’s hard to watch at times.
But Expendables 4 is not a waste of time. While the first hour will probably leave you groaning with exhaustion, everyone in the movie ends up on a huge container ship while most of the Expendables are locked up while Jason Statham has to do Jason Statham things all over the place. Wrestle and brutally kill anyone it encounters while cracking wise. For about 20 minutes during this episode, the movie just about works and the action hangs together nicely. We have Statham and Tony Jaa fighting back to back against a bunch of people. We have a motorcycle chase – with guns-mounted bikes – through the corridors of the ship, ending with a stunt that will remind the action freaks of Statham’s car spin from Transporter 2. And we have a five-minute, head-to-head fight between Statham and Ovis, which is not disappointing in the least.
In this sense, you could That being said, Expendables 4 delivers when it really needs to. But the movie is completely inferior when people are killing each other – most of the time it doesn’t feel like a real movie. While Uwais and especially Jaa are a lot of fun, the new members of the Expendables aren’t given much to do and are mostly forgettable as a result – with the exception of Megan Fox, who mostly holds her own in her scenes. With Statham and Stallone and deserves more sick action roles like this.
Expendables 4 might be a movie for 80s action junkies and Expendables die-hards. The rest you can probably find something Love in Expendables 4, but the rest of the movie is so bad it’s not worth the effort.
