Expend4bles

The fourth and hopefully final Expendables plummeted from an above-average, fun and star-studded action franchise into waters of mediocrity that stink in every direction. It needed a better director. Scott Waugh wasn't the best choice and the disinterest of this franchise can be seen both in the audience (the weakest rating) and in the actors, where all the interesting names are gone except Statham, who’s the only one who's great again, but that's really not enough. Stallone is here rather only in the introduction, almost nobody impresses from the new reinforcements. 50 Cent and Jacob Scipio are useless, Megan Fox I didn't mind, at least a bit of estrogen, Tony Jaa was fine, but was there for less than 10 minutes (even though what he showed was one of the bright moments), and the villain Iko Uwais is ironically the weakest of the whole series (outside of The Raid, Iko is not doing so well and the Americans can't really use his potential, it's time for him to go back to Indonesia). The plot is rubbish, the dialogue is mediocre, the CGI effects are very bad, at least there is some nice gore from time to time and the blood is not spared too much, which I always welcome. The final Uwais-Statham fight was very short. I did like the sequence in the finale where Statham and Tony slashed with their knives, I probably enjoyed that the most. Otherwise, I wasn't bored, it went by fairly quickly, but compared to the competition this series has nothing to offer in terms of acting or action. 5/10. (10/19/2023)

Po cca 10min sem to musela vypnout... to nešlo! (02/04/2024)

This is what I call material fatigue. Judging by the end credits, I could say that the fourth Expendables is probably the best Bulgarian action film I've seen, but even that wouldn't be grasping at straws. It's something that Stallone clearly didn't want to do, for which there was little money (the visual effects are really ugly) and ideas, and where perhaps even the crew didn’t have fun. There are a few good moments, but for all intents and purposes the excellent first part and the goofy comedy that followed, and even the bland third film, are several levels above. Unfortunately. (09/23/2023)

Rather than Expendables 4, this is Jason Statham's one man show, as there's not much left of the original gang. Stallone deftly gets out of the film early on, Dolph Lundgren is already a grandfather and the remaining newcomers are more of an afterthought and just act as a sort of scrub around. Iko Uwais as the main villain doesn't exactly impress either, the dialogue is pared down to the bare essentials and is so literal that a five year old could understand it, and we can't expect a story here either. This brings me to the action, an aspect we've all always gone into this franchise for with gusto, but it's so drastically mediocre that I find it hard to believe. The previous installments relied on confident, bloody, brutal action that was varied, used all the weapons, environments, hand-to-hand combat, backed by a great, charismatic cast, it made the viewer feel like they were in the fight with them. But here all of that is missing, all the scenes are too ordinary and boring, apart from one 1v1 knife fight there is nothing special to be found and all the effects, explosions and blood are blatantly second-rate, hackneyed and mediocre, to the point where I'm surprised this is still the same franchise. In short, it's as if they didn't want to work too hard and had a very limited budget... I guess my problem is that I watched it home, but in the cinema it's still a decent popcorn action flick that keeps your attention, but compared to the rest of the franchise it's just a huge drop in quality and objectively maybe doesn't even deserve the three stars. It's a good thing I like this franchise and the humour works well and entertains in places... (09/23/2023)