The Expendables

For many action fans, the 80s were the golden age of the genre. After all, the decade produced stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone. But what was an almost unrealizable dream for many back then has now become a reality, thanks to Stallone. For the actor has for his latest directorial work, the action thriller "The Expendables", some of the very great icons of the 80s action cinema together on the screen brought.

That the story plays only a minor role, should hardly surprise. The main thing is that it crashes violently. But shootouts, explosions, fistfights, car chases and cool sayings also want to be held together by at least a rudimentary plot framework, and here it looks like this: the mercenary Barney Ross (Stallone) and his squad (including Jason Statham, Jet Li and Dolph Lundgren) always come into play when the official authorities do not want to get their hands dirty. But the latest assignment might be a bit too big even for the experienced Expendables: the dictator of the small island state of Vilena is to be overthrown, thus ending his years-long reign of terror. Too bad the dictator himself is just a puppet of former CIA agent James Monroe (Eric Roberts), who has gathered an army of mercenaries around him. Freeing Vilena is thus almost tantamount to a suicide mission. But whether the Expendables can be stopped from doing so?

"The Expendables" is neither great head cinema, nor intelligent action cinema, but simply a machination virtually exploding with testosterone, which, however, has some moments to offer that are the equivalent of every action fan's wet dream. One of them is of course the rather short, but all the more great screen appearance of Stallone, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The verbal repartee between the two action heroes (dubbed in the German version, as it were, by their regular voice actor Thomas Danneberg) is wonderfully self-deprecating and nostalgic - but unfortunately also far too brief.

The film lives, of course, from the appearances of "old stars" such as Mickey Rourke, Eric Roberts, Dolph Lundgren or Steve Austin, who are put in the best possible light by Stallone. And to make sure they don't look quite so old next to younger colleagues like Jason Statham or Jet Li, Stallone relies heavily on the magic of film editing here. And here, unfortunately, lies the very big weakness of this otherwise very entertaining action smash. Because to hide the slight signs of age of the actors, the fight sequences are either incredibly fast cut or so darkly lit that in some places it is hard to make out who is fighting whom and whose fist has just hit whom in the face.

Otherwise, the action sequences are well staged and completely overdone brutal, just as it was just in the 80s sometimes the case. It becomes clear again and again that Stallone primarily wanted to create a fun, entertaining homage to his own commercial heyday - and he succeeded well in this, even with minor cutbacks. Only the moments when the film tries to deliver something like seriousness or even depth come across as rather unintentionally comical.

"The Expendables" asks only one thing of its viewers: to surrender brains and any pretense of logic at the box office. If you can do that, and if you love 1980s action cinema, you'll get your money's worth. And exactly for these viewers then also applies: absolutely recommendable!!!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp