The Expendables

Just got through seeing it and... its weird.

Well, not weird. Almost exactly what you'd expect, really. My friend said that it looks like it was written by a twelve year old, but he meant it as a complement.

Very little story, very little character development but a whole lot of people die. There are quite a few good one liners (One involving Arnold got the biggest laugh in the cinema), good chemistry between Statham and Stallone. Some pretty nice fights too, particularly when Lundgren and Li have a face off. And with all the star power, an automatic shotgun steals the show.

Its marred by some suprisingly dodgy cgi effects at points though Oh and the poem should have been left out.

All in all, it delivers exactly what the trailer promises. If you saw the trailer and wanted to watch that movie, then you are going to get exactly that. A whole bunch of action heroes spouting one liners and shooting/stabbing/punching/kicking hordes of guards, with everything blowing up around them.

You could have saved all those words and just informed us how many hairs grew on your chest while you were watching it.

Yeah, I had pretty much the exact same reactions, OP. My theater (half full) all laughed hardest at the Arnold joke too, though personally I laughed much harder at Bruce Willis's line just a little earlier.

Auto-shotgun for the win, seriously. Heck, regular shotgun, I laughed when that guy's top half went flying across the room, that pretty much lets you know what you're in for.

MPS, Inc. has got to be happy. They make the Auto Assault 12 automatic shotgun featured in the film. Terry Crews was basically a one man walking advertisement for them.

The FRAG-12 shotgun-launched warhead is a real bit of military tech as well.

The US military is at his time field testing the AA-12 and FRAG-12. I wonder how much the film will make an impact on their final decision on whether or not to buy.



-np

Well, sounds like it will be a fun rental then.

Glad to see the Auto Shotgun getting more notoriety. That is one seriously sweet weapon, and I dislike firearms as a rule.

That was really great when Terry Crews was using the AA-12. If only the one in that popular future war simulator that came out last year acted like the one in the film in terms of rate of fire. It tends to fire extremely fast unlike what we saw. There was actually this one time where I saw Terry Crews here in California. He was at a resturant in the mall by me asking the front desk if they validated for the vallet parking which only costs $6.

I just returned from the 10:30pm showing, and this was one of the most fun movies I've seen. The audience really got into it (myself included) and it become of a communal, interactive experience. I'd encourage you to see if while there's a fair crowd if you've got an inkling to see the movie at some point.

It's an 80s action film crafted by someone who knows and enjoys the genre. The cast's large, but the action scenes give each character enough time to shine and the audience an idea of the action "style" of the various characters. I was pleased to see some brute-force tossed in there alongside eastern martial arts.

The story's exactly what it needs to be to draw the action along and deliver a fun experience. Thankfully they kept things light and didn't toss in any unnecessary lessons beyond not letting killing people for a living kill your soul. I can dig that.

See it. It's worth the money, especially if you have a receptive, participating audience.

Just got back from seeing this. Fun film with some surprisingly good acting going on from everyone, especially Mickey Rourke and Dolph Lundgren (which surprised me).

The only real significant knock against it for me was the bad, borderline fake looking CGI they used instead of practical effects. Well, it was borderline for most of the film, at the very beginning and end there were a couple effects that just looked flat out fake, which was disappointing.

Statham got some really good scenes...but Crews and that BFG stole the show....i was wishing Lundgren got to say "I will break you" at some point, and that Crew would have said "EXPLOSION!"

... My sister in law loved it.

She said there was to much character development though...

ABSOFRACKINGLUTELY AWESOME flick.. omg... AWESOME... AWESOME.. AWESOME




EXPLOOOOOOOOOOOSIONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!

...
....


Monocle smile!!!

Being french, I have no clue how many more hairs grew on my chest after watching this. This movie is the wet dream of every boy raised in the 80s, and Stallone was doing fan-service to just that group.

And my wife giggled maniacally like a crazy school girl as Crews walked the hall with his BFG.

This is a movie that doesn't try to be anything other than a cheesy, fun action movie. I could tell the story beats way before hand, but since they were delivered with explosions and blood, and I loved it.

You want brainless? This was brainless, and great brainless!

Testosterone Laced Movie with High Violence with great one liners, complete awesomeness and at the end you wanted more.

So after the movie we watched Conan, Predator and Cobra.

This movie has so much testosterone that I walked in clean shaven and came out two hours later with a beard.

Met my new new ex-wife, Giselle Itié! Thats all I got to say about that.

Well that and the movie was pure 80's action flick all the way through. I bet the entire script was written on five or six note cards. Still enjoyed it though.

I just saw this this afternoon (with my mom, actually ) and we both enjoyed it tremendously. Our conclusion was "Fun film. Not high art, but fun." I think as long as you don't walk in expecting Citizen Kane or Dr. Zhivago you'll have a good time.

I'm wondering if the shotgun's manufacturers either paid product placement fees or just provided the shotgun & FRAG-12 warhead prop as a form of advertisement.

A few thousand requests for equipment from field units after seeing the movie might be of interest to the military purchasing folks.





-np

I liked it. My wife did too. Just good ol' fashioned shoot 'em up, wisecracking, asskicking fun. Stallone knew exactly what he had here, and didn't try to make anything more than a good retro 80's style action flick. Mindless summer fun. Loved the Willis/Stallone/Schwarzenegger scene. Think how fun that would have been if they could have pulled it off 20 years ago. Terry Crews' auto-shotgun was just awesome. I think my ears are still ringing from that. And DAMN! How good did Charisma Carpenter look?