Expend4bles (2023)
They’ll die when they’re dead,.
Time for some old stupid fun. Well, I mean, there’s some assumptions being made. One of which is both funny to me and ageist- in that a lot of the cast still has the old action heroes I used to watch a long while ago. The other part - stupid fun - is really me just basing the enjoyability factor of the last 3 of these movies I watched and averaging it out to a good time. Let’s be real here - with a tagline like “They’ll die when they’re dead” - I’ve already gotten a chuckle and an expectation that this one isn’t going to think too hard, so grab your skull ring and polish off the one liners, tonight is Expendables 4.
The story starts very much like we all know and remember - some military folks are doing some bad things, and the Expendables are on the line to do a mission to help make it not bad. We even get some more relational conflict and bar fights before things get fully kicked off. A few new faces meet up with the old faces for this mission - which turns out is to stop the opening bad people from getting a bunch of devices that can lead to some nuclear explosions that’d be bad for anyone involved - and we are on our way to action town. Action town leads to various results and a failed mission, and with escalating danger and conflict, we have to wonder just how things will end up for the old Expendables crew and those on the receiving end of a nefarious plot perpetrated by an old villain resurfacing from the past.
I’ve somewhat purposefully did a somewhat bad job here with the story section - to it’s credit the movie does do a decent job of trying to pull out twists and turns and surprises in it’s story, and although someone like me came here mainly for old school action I do admit some might be happier to experience those events themselves. The actors do a good enough job here - but I will pair that with a “classic action hero” tag as well. Don’t get me wrong, some of them get to really try and do a little something more than just banter and one line, but I wouldn’t hold the movie’s acting department to the same standard as some super serious drama because it’s just not what the movie wants the actors to do. An example of this would be one of our new folks - I believe it’s supposed to be the son of Banderas’ character from that last movie - and his overly chatty and boisterously raunchy self. It’s over the top, but it’s exactly what is wanted (by the movie) for that character. It’s one of those lovely “it isn’t really bad acting if it’s what they are supposed to be acting” situations, where depending on how someone feels about all the machismo and the likes will probaly really flavor how well acted they think the movie is.
The movie does add a few new characters in, but I will point out that of all of them it largely ends up feeling like the Statham show. Certainly, if not from screen time but from any major usage to the plot or character department. There’s some minor stuff between interactions of characters, but our main lead is arguably the only one that’s going to get any growth - although I don’t know if I would really call it as much. At the end of the day, he’s still an Expendable. There’s little effects the movie has on the characters, sometimes leading to conflicts and whatnot, but it’s largely not going to be a character piece despite having a bunch of them. Really, one of the new folks gets added at the end of the movie, so she pretty much literally has no time to have anything done with her - but they still do a little bonding sort of deal between her and some of the other characters - so it’s not like they don’t do anything, it just isn’t overly concerned with it.
New or old, the Expendables are back at ait again.
If I were to be fair to the movie though - I’m not here for character building anyways, I’m here for action and one liners. This installment doesn’t feel nearly as much like trying to force a passing of the torch like the last one did, and it’s better off for that for sure. Action is shot pretty decent, and there is a big old variety of things here - fist fights, gun fights, vehicle chases, vehicle fights - I mean, it’s basically just missing a dance battle really. Explosions are everywhere, and for the most part things look pretty good. Yeah, there’s some times where an effect is pretty obviously not practical - but I’m not faulting the movie more than any other movie that does it, because it’s not really taking me out of the movie when i see a little CG blood pop. Most the action is also pretty clean and easy to follow - altough perhaps the overall map of where events are taking place isn’t always the easiest to follow when there’s large factories and stuff and everyone is kind of splitting off from one another - not that it hurts things considering on the small scene-to-scene scale you know where people are in comparison to each other. I will say, however, I do feel like Iko got underutilized a bit here, but I could also argue that for a bunch of the characters considering outside of a battle at the start and a battle at the end, most the time it feels like Statham is doing the work.
There’s plenty of globe trotting here, although it won’t feel quite as much like it. I partiall blame the lack of super-diverse looking environments - a lot of it is indoors or a quick jaunt here or there. Still, it takes it’s set pieces and does a bunch of work with them - especially that final boat set. Everything looks fine enough - quality wise of visuals, lighting, all that stuff. Costume design does a fine job, without anything or anyone really looking too outlandish. Of course, the flip side of that is that nothing particularly stands out in here either. It’s all believable enough that it just blends in. Sure, you might get the odd weapon that will stand out to you - like the little multi-section chain rod whip deal, or the sharp-ended tonfa. Other then that, some of the vehicles are neat, although I’m not really a vehicle guy for the most part so I can’t really speak to how dressed up they are.
If there’s stuff for the thinking person here, I think you really got to look for it. I mean, sure, we could try and say some stuff about relationships - both with people and towards what they do in life - and perhaps priorities or respect, but I came here for dumb action and that’s what I paid attention to. Line deliveries were fine - yeah, sometimes it’s just shouting or actors kind of being the them that you are used to seeing in movies - but it doesn’t really feel phoned in and it’s all plenty understandable thanks to the balance. Music is there, doing plenty of things as music does with the classic mix of moody backup and some radio play stuff mixed in. Good enough while watching, but not breaking my normal mold of sticking around afterwards.
I can appreciate what the movie went for, but I do feel that despite having a bunch of folks it felt a lot more reigned in than previous ones. I will say, coming off the last one I enjoyed this one more even if it lacks Banderas (who was the highlight of three for me), but it still has plenty of folks popping up and enough stuff going in the action front that I wasn’t getting bored. If anything, I’d argue the main fault of the movie is perhaps not sticking it out with some of it’s bolder choices, and instead the move feels a bit Statham-y overall - which I’m sure a bunch of us wouldn’t entirely complain about, considering how well his action movies continue to do. It can be a bit goofy or over the top, but when it comes down to it it’s a fine addition to the Expendables franchise and it does attempt to do things above and beyond the bare minimum - even if it doesn’t really use all those characters to their fullest in the process.