Yes, if quantity is your QR, this movie is it. It gives you more bangs, more mayhem, more bullets, more fireworks, more violence , and finally more of everything, than last ten bollywood movies combined. And as the title suggests, this movie is expendable, superfluous and redundant, much like all of its heroes and anti-heroes. Rightly, this review should end with the preceding statement, but my worthy friends on MS are definitely looking for an explanation from my side.
Story. None actually, and what little there is , I will tell you of it. A couple of mercenaries are promised zillions of dollars by FBI to remove a military dictator from a tiny island somewhere on this planet. When these guys reach there they find the real target was a rogue ex FBI agent smuggling coke , whom the FBI wanted removed as collateral damage. The team was expendable in the ops.
The general has a ravishing, smoky daughter for whom Sylvester Stallone promptly falls. The first mission fails ; the mercenaries return the next time, more as a personal agenda – to rescue the smoky daughter for the pleasure of Mr Stallone, who is having second thoughts about his virility after his first menopause. Naturally, with the kind of ammo they possess, they succeed with little or no harm done to themselves, or to parties supporting their dubious cause. The smoky daughter is returned to her island, to ameliorate it as deemed fit, helped along with the password to Stallone’s very fat bank balance.
Stallone promises to return and ravish her in due course, at his leisure. The Chinese people are shown as very family loving and money conscious, and I don’t think Jet Li would be very pleased with that honor.
Cast. Reads like the whos who list of action heroes during our school days.Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) is the leader, the sage and the strategist of this tight-knit band of men who live on the fringe. The team behind him is made up of Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), former SAS and a savant with anything that has a blade; Yin Yang (Jet Li), a master at close-quarter combat, as long as the enemy is not too tall ; Hale Caesar (Terry Crews), who is a long-barrel weapons specialist; Toll Road (Randy Couture), a skilled demolitions expert and considered the intellect of the group; and Gunnar Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), a combat veteran and an expert in precision sniping who struggles with his own demons.
Sound and Light show. If someone is looking for pyrotechnics brilliance that surpasses the 4TH of Jul display on Hudson Bay, or the Montreal Fireworks Festival held in the summer annually at the Bay of Cannes in Côte d’Azur, France, or The World Pyro Olympics held in Manila, Philippines , or the mega Indian diwali fest , or a rich sardar’s wedding , in vulgarity, eardrum shattering decibelity and general absurdity, then this movie is where you are headed the next weekend afternoon, ready to dump your well earned 500 green bucks down the drain. The fearsome foursome dump as much ammo on a small island the size of Dwarka, that would see at least 10 heavy artillery regiments through 7 days of battle in contact with a stubborn enemy at very intense rates. Here a pistol sounds like a Thomson four barreled fully automatic, water cooled, gas operated , 4000 rpm anti aircraft gun. The medium machine gun sounds like the main armament on a Russian BMP, that is a 30mm canon which can pierce through 1000mm of rock solid concrete. I dunno who the sound mixer is, but the guy sure has over fried the sound to convey the impression to a gullible audience that an entire tank regiment is belting out its week’s battle supplies.
Action. Everything is on a large scale, except the action sequences. All the actors are in their 50s or 60s, and the director has to revv up the reels in superfast speed when these old machos fumble about in arthritic agony. They look old and jaded and therefore rely on the bang for the home run. I have never seen Jason Statham smile, and I think it was for good reason. Here he appears entirely out of context with a wry smile and a strange sense of humor. The dialogues are witless , calculated to annoy even the most forgiving , intellectually impotent of the worthy audience in front seats. There is no plot - at least I failed to spy it. The movie hurtles along at a reckless pace, meandering through uncharted territory, in undefined direction, with apparently no cognizable aim in sight. A couple of scenes are cut and pasted together, to make a disjointed whole. The characters are not built properly, situations do not evolve logically, and the focus is more on a visually appealing construction of the scene or shot, rather than telling a story.
Verdict. Give the movie a wide miss or catch it on tv after three months.