The Expendables franchise knows exactly what it is, and a certain sense of fun harmlessness that pervades the franchise’s installments. The fourth film in the franchise, Expend4bles (2023), is an entirely nothing movie, an hour-and-43-minute deep sigh filled with blood, testosterone, cheeky one-liners, more blood, and then some more testosterone.

Expend4bles, an all-time annoying-to-type movie title, is the first Expendables movie in nine years. Throughout this franchise’s thirteen-year lifespan, it has served entirely one purpose: a half-baked ode to 1980’s action. Outfitted with every dad’s favorite actors, The Expendables offered classic, inoffensive bullets and brawn. It’s meant to be a fun time, a popcorn movie in every understanding of the term. Expend4bles is fine for popcorn, but that’s about it. If you’ve seen the movie’s trailer, you’ve seen the best parts of this movie.

The film kicks off with a reintroduction to the Expendables, an elite team of warriors who can single-handedly take down an entire army. Under the leadership of Sylvester Stallone’s Barney Ross, the Expendables are the team you call in when everything goes to hell. Think of it like the IMF in Mission: Impossible, but exceedingly less cool.

After a mission in Libya goes awry, the Expendables must take down an arms dealer named Ocelot, who stole a couple of nuclear warheads. The film, which quickly turns into Jason Statham’s movie, is largely set on a cargo ship crawling with baddies. Ocelot is trying to start World War III; only the Expendables can stop them. (Because, of course.)

Image Credit to Lionsgate via Yahoo! Movies

We’ve all seen this movie before. There is nothing insane happening in Expend4bles aside from its brash carelessness towards death. No life, no person, no thing matters in this world. Even when a key team member bites the dust, there is little sentimentality. Because that’s not what this movie cares about. What it does care about is bullets and blood.

In some ways, a certain harmless fun surrounds this movie. Expend4bles knows that it’s trash. It isn’t choreographing amazing set pieces of intense action that are sure to blow your socks off. It isn’t crafting interesting, empathetic characters that invite the audience to care about their fates. It isn’t building a high-stakes, world-ending plot. It knows all of this. But it also doesn’t care.

Let’s get this straight: Expend4bles exists to show some cool action actors doing cool action. It isn’t John Wick, and it isn’t Mission: Impossible. Much like the 80’s action movies this franchise reveres, Expend4bles is an ultra-machismo mashup of people getting shot a bunch of times in the head. The cuts are hard, the music is loud, and the men are manly. However, unlike the great action movies of the 80s, Expend4bles isn’t coherent, entertaining, or interesting. It just exists.

Any educated audience member knows what they’re getting into when they buy a ticket for Expend4bles. We all know that, at the end of the day, our heroes will be fine, the world will be fine, and nothing will change. Going into an Expendables movie, every audience member knows all of this. We’re not watching Expend4bles to see a culture-altering movie. We just want to see some outrageous, schlocky action crap. This movie can barely even satisfy that itch.

The action is mostly neigh-incoherent. Its hyper-edited style breaks up sequences in a jarring fashion, and every VFX shot looks bad. Even the CGI blood is outrageous and plastic. Sure, there are some cool knife scenes and fun jokes. But those small moments hardly justify how bad the rest of the movie looks and feels.

Directed by Scott Waugh, Expend4bles is a broken record of a movie, one that cares little to nothing about the quality of its ingredients. Each scene exists to set up a shootout or a knife fight, which, admittedly, can sometimes satisfy whatever primal interest humans have in watching nonsense action. There’s comedy at every moment, resulting in a genuine disinterest in any sense of stakes.

In a time where action movies like John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023) and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) are showing that action movies can be more than quick cuts and explosions, Expend4bles feels like an antique. 

I don’t think this movie really cares, though. So I sure don’t care about it either.

Review Courtesy of Carson Burton

Feature Image Credit to Lionsgate via Daily Express