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The tone of \u201cExpend4bles\u201d can be summarized in a single close-up: a corpse\u2019s severed hand flipping the bird. To its director, Scott Waugh, and all those responsible for resurrecting this dormant action franchise, the middle finger gestures toward this fourth installment\u2019s intended style: macho, smirky and defiant. At its best, the film is all three. This all-star mercenary squadron composed of \u201980s-to-aughts brutes is the cinematic equivalent to Slash\u2019s Snakepit, a supergroup throwback to an era when men were meatheads and we in the audience merrily cheered them on.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll admit I still did, at least for some of this swaggering inanity. Why resist the impossible physics of Curtis Jackson (better known as 50 Cent) body-slamming a baddie back and forth like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum with his dolly? Or Dolph Lundgren lampooning his aging vision by screwing a prescription lens onto his sniper rifle? Or Sylvester Stallone grumbling about a thumb-wrestling injury that he\u2019s chosen to nurse with a tiny custom leather sling? Or Jason Statham, the comically gifted bruiser now promoted to the series\u2019 lead, doing, well, pretty much anything?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
In an even earlier era, Statham\u2019s nimble skills would have awarded him a career like Jimmy Cagney\u2019s. But he\u2019s stuck working in ours, with a script that offers a few enjoyable quips \u2014 he calls an enemy \u201ca sneaky little sausage\u201d \u2014 but mostly lets him down. The screenwriters Kurt Wimmer, Tad Daggerhart and Max Adams seem to share a mutual disinterest in the plot, intoning the words \u201cdetonator\u201d and \u201cWorld War 3\u201d until the threats become background static.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
These high jinks would be more fun if the actors didn\u2019t look so unflappable. Nothing breaks their composure. Not explosions or blood spatters, not beheadings or nuclear bombs, not even the sight of a warship careening in the Sea of Japan. (Perhaps because all of the above have been cheaply rendered in post.) Even a back-flipping, insult-slinging seduction scene between Statham and a new teammate, played by Megan Fox, climaxes without a lip-gloss smudge. It\u2019s just one more artificial palpitation.<\/p>\n
The energy sputters along on throwaway gags, like when Jacob Scipio, as a motor-mouthed young Expendable, sips a cocktail with a pink umbrella at a wake. There\u2019s an absurdly enjoyable detour with a lecherous internet influencer (Samuel Black) and a shootout interrupted by a stereo blasting 50 Cent\u2019s \u201cP.I.M.P.,\u201d which is just plain absurd. Is Jackson the rapper in the same universe as Jackson the assassin? Does he moonlight in carnage?<\/p>\n
Andy Garcia, Randy Couture, Levy Tran and the great martial artist Tony Jaa round out our cast of protagonists while Iko Uwais heads up a generic goon squad, giving all the intensity he can to a villain written with no identifiable traits other than a scar. When things get dull, there\u2019s always Lundgren in the background, playing up his character\u2019s nearsightedness with the daffy charm of Marilyn Monroe. But the film\u2019s last reel is so awful \u2014 so sneeringly contemptuous of our good-faith efforts to play along with these shenanigans \u2014 that we leave the theater still thinking of that middle finger. It sure seemed pointed at us.<\/p>\n
Expend4bles<\/strong>
Rated R for curses and extravagantly digitalized carnage. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n