Having revisited the first three Expendables films shortly before venturing off to see the fourth I was full of hope that, like the first three, Expendables 4 or Expend4bles to give it its proper name, was going to be the same enjoyable action filled nonsense as the first three. How wrong could I be!
It’s a pretty open secret that Sylvester Stallone, whilst he’s in this one, just, intends to take more of a back seat as the franchise goes forward. To that end, as well as a few old faces Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, we’re introduced to a new batch of Expendables played by Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Megan Fox, Tony Jaa, Jacob Scipio, Levy Tran and Andy Garcia.
The plot sees the Expendables, for reasons that I won’t explain are led by a terribly miscast Megan Fox, trying to track down a nuclear weapon that terrorists have hidden on board a cargo ship that’s disguised as an American aircraft carrier. The ship being sailed into Russian waters where the bad guys plan to detonate in the hope that it will start World War 3.
The last three films had the team traveling all over the world chasing down bad guys. This time for about two thirds of the film they’re stuck on a boat, well it’s meant to be a boat but through a mixture of bad CGI and some terrible sets, you never get the impression that they travelled any further than a studio sound stage.
Jason Statham tries his best but lumbered with an inferior cast and an ending that’s so corny that you’ll see coming from the very first minute, he’s always fighting an uphill battle.
Somehow they have manged to turn the Expend4bles into something that resembles a straight to DVD film from the 90s. Hopefully if we do see a fifth it’ll be better than this poor effort of an action film.