After hearing scathing reviews and comments about the latest in The Expendables franchise since its release in September, I have finally checked the film out for myself and you know what! I enjoyed it! Being a fan of 80s action films I was always excited about the teaming up of action stars in the same film and when it came to The Expendables (2010) I had fun! It didn’t contain as many action stars in the same film as I had hoped. I genuinely had hoped that it would be crammed full of the greats. But that’s a small gripe. We had Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Willis, Lundgren, Rourke and from a slightly more modern time. We had Statham and Li.

Bring on the second film and we had most of that cast, but also had Norris and Van Damme, and so The Expendables franchise was delivering pretty much what it said it would and the films were fun. The Expendables III was fun but did suffer box office wise due to an illegal torrent which ran rampant across the glove, plus they released a PG type film rather than an all out action film that we hoped for (we did get an unrated cut further down the line which did improve the film a lot)

So here we are 2023, with the fourth film out and suffering from online keyboard ‘critics’ blasting the film in a lot of ways, how much money it made (or didn’t make!), moaning about some of the effects (there are some dodgy blue screen shots in the film) , the casting, the plot, the silliness of it all and whilst some of those gripes might have some validity (the blue screen comment is one of them). I went into my viewing of the film with the following attitude  ‘show me an entertaining action film please’ and it did. I had a blast watching Expend4bles .  Does it had some effect scenes that look a little ropey? Yes.  Is the plot silly? Yes. Are some of the casting choices not what we hoped? Perhaps. Is some of the dialogue in the film super cheesy? Yes. But is the film fun? I thought so. Are the action set pieces entertaining? I thought yes to that too?  I could go on for pages about how I feel that much of the online community moans too much about movies, that they nitpick them too much, and they seem to have forgotten that not every film is made for them, and that some films out there- you might not like, and that not every film has to change your life.  The Expendables franchise isn’t meant to be The English Patient, not is is trying to be a series of films that shape our personalities going forward. The Expendables franchise is meant to be a series of films that are filled with fights, shootouts, explosions and fun dialogue.  

With the loss of some characters and actors from the previous films in the series (theres no Arnie, Willis, Ford, Rourke) we get some new additions. We have the always watchable Tony Jaa ( Ong Bak), Iko Uwais (The Raid), Levy Tran (MacGyver), Jacob Scipio (Bad Boys 4 Life), 50 Cent (Escape Plan) and Megan Fox (Transformers) and they are all really good in the film. I remember when casting news came out stating that Megan Fox was going to be in Expend4bles and my initial reaction was ‘erm why shes not an action star’ and whilst I still don’t think of action star when I think of Megan Fox, she was pretty great in Expend4bles, a great addition to the cast and if there is a 5th film (and looking at the box office and the critical reaction, I’m not so sure there will be a 5th) then I would genuinely like to see this cast back again.

So if you want to watch a very silly action film that actually did feel like it was an 80s action film, then I would recommend you do check out Expend4bles (I’m still not a fan of the 4 being in the title, I keep forgetting where the 4 goes)  The film is silly, far fetched and cheesy, but I found it very entertaining!