THE CRITIC-AL LIST
Reviews by Alan Jones
5 STAR FAB - 1 STAR RUBBISH

Season Of The Witch
Amer
Tron: Legacy
Machete
Let Me In
Resident Evil: Afterlife
Salt
The Expendables
The Last Airbender
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Inception
Predators
The Twilight Saga:Eclipse
Toy Story 3
Hot Tub Time Machine
Iron Man 2
Repo Men
The Collector
Clash of the Titans
Shelter
How To Train Your Dragon
Kick-Ass
Shutter Island
Alice In Wonderland
The Crazies
Case 39
The Wolfman
Legion
The Lovely Bones
Black Death
Daybreakers
Avatar
Ninja Assassin
The Descent: Part 2
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
The Box
2012
Disney's A Christmas Carol
The Horseman
Solomon Kane
Pandorum
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs
District 9
An Education
G.I. Joe: The Rise Of The Cobra
Orphan
A Perfect Getaway
The Imaginarium Of
Doctor Parnassus
Up
Harry Potter
And The Half-Blood Prince
The Taking of Pelham 123
Transformers
The Revenge Of The Fallen
Antichrist
Terminator Salvation
Last House On The Left
Inglorious Basterds
Angels & Demons
Adventureland
Star Trek
Crank: High Voltage
Coraline
Dragonball Evolution
Let The Right One In
Drag Me To Hell
Race to Witch Mountain
Knowing
Monsters Vs. Aliens
Not Quite Hollywood
Lesbian Vampire Killers
Martyrs
The Children
Surveillance
Watchmen
The Unborn
The International
Friday The 13th
Franklyn
Push
Punisher:War Zone
The Good The Bad And
The Weird
Hush
Underworld
The Rise OF The Lycans
My Bloody Valentine
Bolt
Slumdog Millionaire

Directed by Sylvester Stallone. Starring Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, Terry Crews, Mickey Rourke, Eric Roberts, Dolph Lundgren, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Danny Trejo, Charisma Carpenter. Action. USA, 103 mins.

Cannon fodder. The memory of tacky mid-Eighties action adventures from that low-rent Goran-Globus company loom large over Sylvester Stallone’s latest screen reinvention. This time not of his signature ROCKY or RAMBO personas, but of the very macho genre he exemplified in such pot-boilers as COBRA and OVER THE TOP.

If you got off on those early ACTION JACKSON types of testosterone-fuelled melodramas starring Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal or Jean Claude van Damme (three people who strangely don’t appear in this celeb hero celebration), then the Italian Stallion’s recreation of that bygone era with unfunny one-liners, lunatic death-defying thrills and shabby visual effects is definitely one for you. Those who would have liked more ironies in the fire will shake their heads in disappointment that even as vague parody THE EXPENDABLES doesn’t work. It’s okay up to a point, but that point is quickly reached once the truly hilarious Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger cameos are out of the way. It’s Willis (playing the mysterious Church) who offers Barney Ross (Stallone) and his band of merry mercenaries (Jason Statham, Jet Li, Randy Couture, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews) a job no one else is willing to take. The mission: to overthrow General Gaza (DEXTER star David Zayas), murderous dictator of the Mexican gulf country Vilena, who is fronting a drug smuggling operation for rogue ex-CIA operative James Monroe (Eric Roberts, on lip-smackingly nasty form). After a recon trip to see the lay of the land and waste a few armies, where Barney gets the hots for the general’s double agent daughter Sandra (Giselle Itie), the band of brothers return to cause further endless explosive havoc and CGI blood-spurting mayhem in the effort to free the native people from tin-pot tyranny. Tough guy Steve Austin plays Monroe’s killing-machine bodyguard while wrestler Mickey Rourke (giving the best performance) is a former Expendable-turned-tattoo artist whose parlour is used by the dirty half-dozen as their unofficial HQ.

Co-written by Stallone and David Callaham (of DOOM infamy), THE EXPENDABLES – or more truthfully EXPANDABLES because of the older stars’ waistlines – treads water despite covering the bases of preposterous brute force and muscular bombast. But who really cares when righteous retribution is all that drives this over-killed cartoon-style mythology, awash with straight-up violence and easy catharsis.  Many won’t in what is modishly being described as SEX AND THE CITY for guys, a male guilty pleasure in designer combat fatigues rejoicing in the lame-brained ham-fisted fare of AN EYE FOR AN EYE yester-year. 

Alan Jones

© London FrightFest Ltd. 2000-2010
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