Almost 10 years after The Expendables 3 seemed to kinda wrap the franchise up by adding some new characters, it seemed we had seen the last of them. And the third movie had one hell of a cast that there was no way to top it even though it was flawed. It might have worked better had they stayed with the R rating of the first two. (Rumor has it that Chuck Norris only agreed to be in the second one if there was little profanity. After they filmed his scenes, they decided to make it more violent though as it was originally supposed to be PG-13.)
Walking into the first few minutes of the fourth one titled Expend4bles, the movie earns its R rating by having Megan Fox, as Gina, drop the F-bomb with Lee Christmas (Jason Statham) and Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) so much the dialogue doesn’t make sense. But if this scene is any sign of the rest of the movie, you should stop watching. Most of the original cast members like Jet Li, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Terry Crews and Mickey Rourke obviously decided it wasn’t worth the paycheck to appear in an awful movie like this. Randy Couture and Dolph Lundgren are back with 50 Cent, aka Curtis Jackson appearing.
It looks like one of the mockblusters The Asylum puts out but there was a lawsuit that prevented the movie from going into production. Instead, the filmmakers just used the script and whatever they could to save money on. Reportedly, it cost $100 million. It’s obvious, much of the money went to the actor’s paychecks, because the special effects are just hard to watch. Seriously, a movie like this shouldn’t look so cheap and schlocky.
Even worse, people going in will notice that Stallone barely appears as Barney apparently dies in a plane crash in the first act. Of course, there’s no surprise that Barney will reappear in the final act around the major climax. But even that is handled poorly. Much of the movie takes place on an aircraft carrier. And even that lacks a lot of any excitement. You can also tell the ship is somewhere in dry dock somewhere and a lot of green screen to make it they’re off the shores of eastern Russia.
Thankfully, the movie’s failure at the box office, earning about half of its budget and getting some of the worst reviews of 2023 should be the end of this franchise once and for all.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 