Film review--The Expendables

starring Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Lie, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Eric Roberts, Steve Austin, Terry Crews, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Randy Couture, Charisma Carpenter, and Jean Claude Van-Damm as The Beav.

A team of mercenaries is hired by the mysterious "Mr. Church" (Willis) to travel to a Caribbean island and knock off a dictator. When two of the team members (Stallone and Statham) recon the locale, they meet the beautiful leader of the local resistance. The two are forced to escape, leaving the woman behind. Do they cut their losses or come back with the rest of the team and attempt a suicidal rescue mission?

This movie is exactly what it's supposed to be. And for what it is, it is very good.

That's about as succinctly as I can put it. Sly Stallone set out to gather the top action stars in movies today and direct one helluva kick ass action movie. And that is exactly what he did.

You will not find 3 dimensional characters here. In fact, you'll be lucky if they peak into the 2nd dimension. If you've seen action movies before, there won't be a whole lot of twists and turns. What reversals there are, I'm certain you'll see them coming. There is no subtext, no grand statement on the human condition. This is not Moliere.

This is a movie about a mercenary team full of guys with names like Christmas, Toll Road, Yin Yang, Gunner, and Hale Caeser. You'll see explosions, big guns, bad ass martial arts and bladework, no skimping on blood and gore, and a few hot chicks thrown in for good measure. If I have any real criticism, it is with the choppy, "I'm high on meth" style of camerawork brought about by the loathsome Michael Bay in "Transformers." The spectacle moves so fast that you can't tell what's going in a few of the action scenes. But it is nowhere near as pronounced here as it was in "Transformers."

This is why the summer movie season was manufactured all those years ago. This is porn for the action movie fan and I'm telling you, if you have even a drop of testosterone in your body, you will enjoy this.

RATING: PDG (Pretty Darned Good)