The Expendables

The Expendables should be a good time at the movies.  You know the hook: bring together many of the biggest action stars of the ‘80s, ‘90s, and today and set ‘em up on a “men on a mission” picture.  But it’s a joyless picture, with no sense of fun and an editing style that robs the audience of pleasure.

Here’s an example: Jet Li and Dolph Lundgren fight.  Now, you could market a whole film entitled simply Jet Li and Dolph Lundgren Fight.  These guys are respected martial artists and legitimate stuntmen: all you need to do is put them in a gym with a choreographer for a few days, let them put something together, and roll the film.  We, the audience, want to see these men’s expertise in action.  But director Sylvester Stallone and editors Ken Blackwell and Paul Harb (This picture’s Stallone’s baby though, so I’m assuming he wielded significant control over the editing process) don’t trust us to pay attention to a long take, or even a series of mid-length takes.  They quick-cut from shot to shot so quickly that it looks like they’re trying to hide the incompetence of pretty actors, not showcase two of the most respected stunt fighters in the business.  In the end, I had only a fragmented impression of two guys fighting.  The film gave me no artistry to enjoy.

Here’s another example: at the end, there’s huge climax with lots of gunfire and ‘splosions.  I’m the target audience for this kind of thing, but the editing created such discontinuities that I had no idea of geography of the battle.  I knew the good guys were killing the bad guys, but I had no sense of how each bullet fired or objective taken got the good guys closer to winning.  All I knew was that stuff was blowing up real good, but even that gets boring if I don’t know why it’s getting blown up.

Look, I didn’t go into The Expendables expecting Hamlet.  But I did have a minimum expectation of being able to enjoy an hour and a half of good stunt fighting and practical stunt work, not to mention being able to keep track of who was shooting whom and why.  The Expendables failed to deliver on these reasonable expectations.  This film is a failure.