Starring Jason Statham, Sylvester Stallone, Curtis ’50 Cent’ Jackson, Megan Fox, Dolph Lundgren, Tony Jaa, Iko Uwais, Randy Couture, Jacob Scipio, Levy Tran and Andy Garcia

Directed by Scott Waugh

Lionsgate, out now

We’re going to do this a little differently. Because Expendables 4 (no, no funny numbers-centric title for you, movie. You know what you did) certainly doesn’t. I’m going to talk about the movie and then I’m going to include links to its most criminally under-used performers and where you can see them being treated like the professionals they are.

It’s possible you’re picking up that Expendables 4 is bad. It is very, very bad.

Now operating out of New Orleans, the Expendables line up has changed again. Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) is still in charge, Lee Christmas (Jason Statham) is still his second-in-command and work wife, Gunnar Jensen (Dolph Lundgren) is now sober and the team sniper and Toll Road (Randy Couture) gets lots more lines now Terry Crews has refused to come back. They’re joined by Gina (Megan Fox), a CIA operative and team member and Easy Day (50 Cent), a former Navy SEAL and Galan (Jacob Scipio), son of ex team member Galgo from The Expendables 3. Dispatched by Marsh (Andy Garcia), an old CIA friend of Barney’s to Libya, the team are sent to pick up Ocelot. A mysterious terrorist who Barney narrowly missed apprehending 25 years previously, he’s in Libya along with Rahmat (Iko Uwais) to retrieve nuclear detonators. When Barney is shot down and killed, they fail, Lee is fired for trying to save his friend and the team regroup to track down the detonators.

The three things that work in the entire movie are Statham and a pair of closing action sequences. The first has him team with Decha (Tony Jaa), a former Expendable who has renounced violence and unrenounces it pretty quickly. Jaa, Statham and their stunt doubles have an extended run through the freighter the third act is set on which is the most fun you’ll have with the entire movie. Jaa is a fluid, graceful performer and Statham’s karate background and physicality mean he’s the size 12 boot to Jaa’s velvet knife. It’s big fun to see these two together, and slightly less fun to see Statham and Uwais go at it later on. Again, both are fluid, subtle brawlers and there’s a moment in their fight scene where Uwais uncorks that is the single thing in this dismal movie that will make you sit up and pay attention. Uwais and Jaa are both fantastic and neither has been treated with anything like the respect they deserve by Hollywood. That doesn’t change here.

There’s also a surprisingly fun and even slightly emotional sequence towards the end where Statham’s Christmas has done everything right, gone above and beyond and is just out of luck, bullets and time. Just for a second you get the sense that someone in this series may actually be expendable. Just for a second, because Statham is better than anyone ever gives him credit for, he shows us Christmas realising that too. It doesn’t last and what follows is the stupidest choice the movie makes. That in turn leads to the most blisteringly mean-spirited, deeply unpleasant closing joke in the franchise. Seriously, the end of this movie is two highly trained veteran mercenaries yukking it up about how a plot hole got closed because of pre-meditated murder. They all but high five over a corpse and while it’s the most rancid beat in this deeply ill-advised sequel, it’s not the only one.

The Expendables 4 plays like an action movie that doesn’t like action. Director Scott Waugh has been making a name for himself with serviceable mid-level action movies and both the surprisingly great Need for Speed and Hidden Strike are worth your time. But where those films used a relatively small budget to do some fun things, Expendables 4 uses a $100 million budget to look like a PS2 game. The run-and-gun through Gaddafi’s Old Chemical Weapons Factory (which is named, exactly as that, onscreen) is an unlovely mess of good practical stunt driving and lousy CGI. The freighter in the third act feels like a sound stage. The much-vaunted gore and profanity is back but the fights are cut so rapidly it may as well not be. The movie is about veterans who are incredibly good at what they do. It shouldn’t look, sound, or play as amateurish as it almost always does.

The cast, and how they’re treated, is the real problem. Jaa and Uwais deserve so much better and so does Mike Möller, who you won’t recognise yet. A veteran stunt performer, Möller is thrown away here as a one-shot joke and a core part of that terrible ending. They’re not the only ones either, with Megan Fox’s Gina essentially Charisma Carpenter’s Lacy in a flak vest. Fox is yet another performer who has proved how good she is and is given nothing to do here. Both she and Levy Trans’ Lash have characters who are exactly the words ‘VIOLENT GIRL!’ wide and it’s a credit to their skills that both do as well as they do with the material they’re given. Likewise Jacob Scipio who is given the unenviable task of doing a cover version of Antonio Banderas’ character and nails it. The rest of the cast do what they can but it isn’t much and it shows. Two movies ago, Lundgren’s Gunnar was a former professor who, while permanently drunk, was competent. Here he’s a comedic old man in a wig with prescription glasses whose inability to hit anything because of his bad eyesight is a running joke. Oh and he falls off the wagon and instantly becomes a better soldier. Because of course he does.

The movie was written, by the way, by Kurt Wimmer, Tad Daggerhart and Max Adams. Wimmer’s got a raft of solid, fun action scripts to his name, Adams is a great comedy writer and I don’t know Daggerhart’s work. But all three of them had a bad day, all at once, on this. In fact that’s the movie in a nutshell; it looks at every mistake the previous movies made and does them all again, all at once, louder and crueller and frequently much, much stupider.

Verdict: Expendables 4 is almost entirely awful and without Statham carrying the third act on his back, it would be unwatchable. As it stands it’s an ugly, cheap-looking, cruel, tone deaf and overstuffed postscript to a series which deserved so much better. Just like the audience.

Alasdair Stuart

 

If you want to see Mike Möller actually work, here’s one of his reels

 

Tony Jaa’s work in the Ong Bak series remains peerless but pick basically anything he’s done (Including Furious 7 and, just, Jiu Jitsu) and you’ll have more fun than you will here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Jaa

Iko Uwais’ American work is similarly frustrating but, again, pick anything from his filmography (that isn’t Mile 22, which this movie reminded me of in the worst of ways) and you’re in for a good time. Especially The Raid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iko_Uwais