The Expendables... Truly Expendable

Sometimes I feel like I shouldn't be watching movies in the cinema at all. Just about a week ago, fellow Muslims and I celebrated 'Eid' which is a celebration of accomplishing your duties during the month of Ramadan. Like every year, the movie entertainment industry here likes to delay movie releases to this date in order to get the most profit out of movie goers. Every Eid people go to the movies, they sometimes watch two to three in one day. It's one of those things that make the nights feel special. One certain movie that was delayed this year was the movie 'The Expendables' by Sylvester Stallone. Seeing the cast alone was enough motivation to watch the movie; oh how wrong I was to think movies like that would be great to watch.



When I took a look at the poster and saw that almost everyone in the cast was a star, I felt amazed that such a cast would all agree to act in this one movie. The cast included: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Steve Austin, Bruce Willis and a bunch of guys I forget their names knowing they're famous enough for me to be in an ironic position since I'm commenting about this movie; maybe it's a side effect of 'THAT MOVIE SUCKS' syndrome. Rumors were that there were a number of actors who pulled out due to fear of losing face in this movie; one such rumored actor was Jean-Claude Van Damme. He pulled out because apparently Jet Li was going to beat him up in the movie. That didn't seem to bother Jet Li as he was categorically defeated at hand-to-hand combat by some less-acclaimed actor in the action genre. This is exactly why I regretted ever thinking that a huge action cast would make the movie better.

First of all, there's not enough room to make everyone into a hero, the two actors with most screen time were Stallone and Statham. Statham played his regular good-guy-that-can-beat-everyone role where as Stallone, well… I thought his acting was unbelievable; unbelievably nauseous, I got sick in the stomach every time I heard him talk. I thought maybe he'd wise up and try to act like someone other than Rambo. Bruce Willis, who was on the poster like he was going to have a pivotal role, only had one scene... THATS RIGHT! and guess who shows up in that same scene, THE TERMINATOR HIMSELF... Ja! Once again, only one black guy in a movie and what's worse is that they only gave him two lines in the whole movie. Haha! I like how he was used to toss a missile into a helicopter while Stallone machine gunned the missile with his hand gun. That's another thing, how the hell do you fire 10 rounds in 2 seconds using a handgun, I know there are some handguns that are capable of firing much more in a lesser time, but this wasn't the case, he was actually pulling the trigger 10 times in 2 seconds.

With all the cast that they gathered, why couldn't they get a more renowned female actor? I'm sure there were plenty of well known female actors who are capable of playing a South American role. Is it me? or did that dictatorate 'South American' country have an edit of the Palestinian flag as their coat of arms? It was shown in only two clips and was (to me at least) a clear brainwashing attempt to show that this is the way Palestinians are. Was there a reason to place a flag in the first place?

Once again I was suckered into watching another "Crap of Hollywood" movie. There's A LOT more I can write about this movie but people probably haven't even reached this part of this post after closing it from reading so much.