I can't think of anything positive to say about The Expendables. It doesn't look or sound good, there's no humour in it, every action scene ends with the same joke and there is no acting in it. I'm a fan of blow-everything-up movies as long as they're good. This isn't good.
The much hyped "awesome action all-star line-up" is entirely pointless. It's 90% Stallone and Statham, plus a few others that you don't know about. Jet Li provides some of the greatest anti-acting I've seen in a long time. Think amateur dramatics and then lower your expectations. Schwarzenegger shuffles on like a 1950s robot, quipping and smirking his way through an entirely pointless scene where you can see from the editing it was a struggle getting enough footage for it to make sense.
It's an old joke, but Stallone does needs subtitles. You get subtitles for the Spanish scenes, so why not Stallone? They're both as incomprehensible to me.
CONCLUSION: The film tries too hard to be what it set out to be. Everything is forced and formulaic in the worst way possible.
I have remembered one decent bit in the film: the 20 second scene with the automatic shotgun. Amusing, but not worth the admission. Even if you're a Cineworld Unlimited customer.
