The Doctor’s Diagnosis: F
Yikes. Back in the 90s, it was commonplace for action sequels to be relegated to straight-to-video releases once interest had dropped, the main stars were no longer returning and the budgets were reduced to the level of a high school play. For instance, there are three sequels to Bloodsport that almost nobody has seen and the few that have seen them, such as myself, basically only remember them as points of trivia. The Expendables 4 (or Expend4bles, if you’re as stupid as the film’s producers think you are) feels like that kind of action sequel, except that I didn’t rent this on VHS on a Friday in 1995 and drown my sorrow with Pizza Hut and Surge. No, I saw this pile of shit in a theater and I’m honestly still kind of amazed that Lionsgate had the balls to release this in theaters. It just doesn’t make sense. The Expendables 4 being a major theatrical release is like booking a third grader to play their recorder at Madison Square Garden.
Even as someone that watches tons of movies, I was stunned by the sheer lack of giving a shit in Expendables 4. I’m not even going much into the plot because I barely remember it, but it’s the basic bad guy trying to steal missiles to start World War III routine. To simply call that uninteresting would be a massive disservice to the complete lack of effort put forth by this film’s writers. I don’t even remember what the villain looked like. That’s the kind of trance-like effect that this movie has on your brain. I would frequently realize that I had no idea where the characters were or what they were doing because I had already forgotten the events of the previous scene. It’s the movie equivalent of being hit in the head with a frying pan every five minutes.
What the fuck happened to this series? I love the first two entries (especially The Expendables 2) and the general idea and spirit of those movies was just fun. Just get a bunch of big-name action stars together in one movie for the first time and let the bullets fly. The second entry, which I think is the height of the series, expanded the roles of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis beyond mere cameos and added Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme to the fray. Van Damme played a villain named Vilain for fuck’s sake, how do you not enjoy that? The Expendables 3 was a major letdown due to the PG-13 rating and misguided emphasis on younger characters, but it still added Harrison Ford, Wesley Snipes, a hilarious Antonio Banderas and a great villain role for Mel Gibson.
What do we get here? Megan Fox and 50 Cent. Yes, you know, those iconic action stars Megan Fox and 50 Cent. Fox isn’t a bad actress, she’s just been in a bunch of terrible movies, but they don’t belong here. This is the dollar bin version of the casts of the first three Expendables movies. What’s even more astonishing is the level of importance ascribed to the new characters without providing any backstory whatsoever. Early on, Jason Statham’s character is fired by some guy we’ve never heard of before (played by Andy Garcia) and Fox’s character is appointed the new leader of the team. Who the fuck is this woman? Does she have any backstory? Why don’t Dolph Lundgren’s and Randy Couture’s characters object to this at all? She then proceeds to do literally nothing for the duration of the movie, just wandering through battle scenes looking like she in on her way to a GQ photoshoot. 50 Cent (I know he has a real name, I just don’t care enough to look it up) is also just kind of there. He also has no backstory, just kind of shows up as a member of the team and says a line just often enough to remind you that he’s in the movie. There is also an Asian woman that shows up at some point as a member of the team. I have no idea who she is. I honestly thought she was just a background character until she went on the mission with the rest of the team. I never caught her name.
Now we come to the real kicker, the true reason why The Expendables 4 isn’t just a run-of-the-mill action movie, but rather a monument to human apathy: the visual effects. I apologize to every other movie that I have criticized for having poor visual effects. For example, The Flash has terrible visual effects, sure, but they at least looked finished and like something made with 2023 technology. This is on a whole other level. The effects in this have the quality of a cut scene from a Sega CD game (that’s a game system from 1991, kids). They are distractingly terrible, with the green screen shots looking like test footage as if these effects were just meant as place-holders until the real stuff was done. The most comparable effects I can think of would be from last year’s god-awful Jeepers Creepers: Reborn, but that was a SciFi channel movie. This frigging thing was released into thousands of theaters. Lionsgate should be ashamed of charging theater prices for this.
This series needs to be taken behind the barn and shot. With Stallone only having an extended cameo, the idea was to make a transition to Statham being the lead for the series. In theory, that isn’t a terrible idea. But its downright unfair that Statham is expected to carry this with no A-list action stars (or even B or C-list) added to the cast, a script that was seemingly written on a napkin in an hour and effects that were created on a Macintosh Classic. There are bad films and there are downright embarrassing films and The Expendables 4 made me feel embarrassed just watching it.
Image by: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expendables_4#/media/File:Expendables_4_Poster.jpg
