Title – Expend4bles (2023)

Director – Scott Waugh (Need for Speed) 

Cast – Jason Statham, Megan Fox, Sylvester Stallone, 50 Cent, Andy Garcia, Iko Uwais, Tony Jaa

Plot – Barney (Stallone) and Christmas (Statham) and their rag-rag crew of expendable mercenaries for hire are back once more, this time tracking down the dangerous Rahmat (Uwais) who is looking to set-off a potential World War 3 scenario if they can’t stop him. 

“They’ll die when they’re dead”

Review by Eddie on 20/10/2023

It still feels like it was yesterday when the star-studded action extravaganza The Expendables first burst onto the scene in 2010, uniting modern and days gone by A-listers and fan favourites such as Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Jason Statham, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jet Li and Terry Crews to gift us an event that was far from a cinematic masterpiece but one that provided a fun and over the top ride nonetheless, riding a wave of decent sentiment to a close to $300 million worldwide box office haul and spawning what is now 3 sequels following on from its first iteration.

Like a film transported directly from the 90’s action heydays, The Expendables was never meant to be taken as anything more than a time filling fan servicing outing that reveled in its over the top nature, all the while dispatching bad guys while reminding us about how old everyone in the film was but compared to this newest outing, hilariously titled simply Expend4bles, those early Expendables outings now seem like works of Akira Kurosawa in comparison. 

Showing how much has changed in the 13 years on from its first outing, Expend4bles has arrived recently with little to no fanfare, on its way to earning less than $50 million dollar’s in global box-office receipts against a how on earth did it cost a $100 million dollar budget, a paltry critical and audience reception and a sense that these type of films no longer have a presence in today’s cinematic landscape. 

With a cast that now includes the “talents” of Megan Fox and 50 Cent and overseen by the mastermind who gifted the world such films as Hidden Strike and Need for Speed, all signs pointed towards Expend4bles being a fairly passable film but little would have prepared audiences for just how cheap and nasty this film feels, with the first extended 30 or so minutes of the film some of the most poorly executed examples of Hollywood budget and production sensibilities seen in recent times, as Waugh and his cast of sleepwalking stars spend a majority of the films time on a lethargic cargo ship setting that offers little in the way of true entertainment value or a chance to see the films cast do anything worth a note. 

With its main draw-card Sylvester Stallone getting very little too do, atrociously bad shootouts with some of the worst CGI and blood effects this side of a Uwe Boll film, a scene where for some unknown reason 50 Cent’s rap anthem P.I.M.P plays in some weird meta-crossover and an utter waste of new additions Tony Jaa and Iko Uwais, who barely even get to raise a sweat or show audiences their skill-sets in criminally underused roles, Expend4bles is a genuine example of a failure to launch, highlighted no more so than a bizarre segment where the “boys” celebrate Barney killing an everyday citizen in cold blood.

Hooray for murder! 

As a trite B-movie that is masquerading as a Hollywood event picture, Expend4bles does undoubtedly offer up some extremely rare and needs to be seen to be believed cheesy goodness but after such tolerable and mindlessly mid-tier fun exercises in the first two additions, it’s sad to see where this franchise has now gone too and with much of the initial cast now having jumped from the sinking ship, the thought of more Megan Fox and 50 Cent mumbling their way through tired and unexciting adventures where the most memorable thing is having Randy Couture urinate on a grate is a truly horrifying prospect indeed. 

Final Say – 

A strong candidate for the most entertaining bad movie of 2023, after relatively fun initial outings that knew what they were and what they weren’t, The Expendables series reaches new lows with Expend4bles, a film that finds incredible new ways to waste both the talent hidden in its cast of cheque chasers and its considerable budget, one that should be indicted on crimes against spending. 

1 1/2 sore backs out of 5