Expend4bles

 

Expend4bles is the fourth installment in The Expendables film series, following The Expendables 3 (2014). In this film the aging mercenaries team up with a new generation of soldiers to take down a ruthless arms dealer with his own private army.

The movie is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, it had much better fight sequences and cinematography than the previous films. The action is brutal and exciting.

On the other hand, although the story was interesting with some decent twists, the script was corny, unrealistic, and full of cheesy dialogue. And during certain action sequences the CGI was painfully cheap and fake looking.

Regarding casting Sylvester Stallone stated that this would be his last film in the franchise which was made abundantly clear in how they focused the story more on Jason Statham's character, which I was okay with. I also liked that they finally had a film in the franchise where a woman took more of the lead. Megan Fox is good as Gina, a CIA operator and member of the Expendables. She was tough and capable, and held her own against the male cast members. However, Fox's character doesn't have much in the way of character development. The same was true of the rest of new cast members. Even though the character development wasn’t very strong I did appreciate that they added some additional diversity with Tony Jaa as Decha, a former member of the Expendables, Iko Uwais as Suarto Rahmat, a mercenary and the secondary antagonist, Jacob Scipio as Galan, a new member of the Expendables and son of former member Galgo., Levy Tran as Lash, a CIA operator and a new member of the Expendables and Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson as Easy Day, a new member of the Expendables.

Regarding the old guard, Dolph Lundgren and Randy Couture were back as Gunner Jensen and Toll Road, respectively. I liked the evolution of Gunner character. His wig was a mess but I did like the play on him getting older and needing glasses. They were both still fun to watch, but their characters had a lot of the same running jokes since the first movie. It was starting to feel a bit washed up. And Andy Garcia's character with the toothpick in every scene is a particularly odd choice.

In the end Expend4bles was a fun but forgettable action movie.