Rent Expend4bles (2023)

A terrible, rubbish & badly scripted end to a middling franchise, with the worst CGI I've ever seen - Expend4bles review by TB

After an incredibly varied quality of films (read my reviews for the first 3 to get an idea of them,) we finally reach what is almost certainly the end of the road for the Expendables. Irrelevant of whether you are a fan of schlocky action films or someone who normally doesn't go in for that genre & prefers something more serious or high-quality, in the previous 3 films, there was something for almost anyone. But after a 9 year wait with multiple failed starts & casting issues (even Stallone walked away & disowned the franchise for a while, and he was one of the original creators of it,) we now have the 4th film.

And what a way to go out: a film with an atrocious script, wooden acting, new members of the "Expendables" team who are not 80's/90's action stars but random actors who are simply introduced, (at the expense of the original team, only a couple of whom are back for this one,) no chemistry and the worst CGI I have ever seen in a film of this budget ($100 million.) For many people, the look of the film is literally all you can remember. There are large sections which look like they were lifted wholesale out of an early 2000's game, and the colour palette is so garish, cloying & bleached out it actually hurts your eyes to look at.

There is much more I could say, but I can't really be bothered to. I always had a soft spot for the Expendables series, because in its infancy, it actually was doing something that Hollywood seemed to have forgotten how to do: schlocky, silly action & one-liners, with the retro stars you grew up watching as a kid, sharing the screen together & inviting you along to enjoy the massive fun they were all having. And whilst it started to go wrong with number 3, at least that was competently made & had an amazing villain in Mel Gibson's Conrad Stonebanks.

But the worst & most damning thing about this film? There isn't a single second of fun or enjoyment in it. It's just a boring, rubbish & terrible sequel, which puts the final nail in the coffin of a once-good film series. If they actually existed, you'd hire the Expendables to take out the people behind this garbage, once and for all.

One for the hardcore - Expend4bles review by AER

In a nutshell, if you came back for the fourth Expendables film, you must be a fan of the first three. They are fairly unique in their dedication to delivering wafer-thin action stories filled with lots of heavy gun-fire, hand-to-hand combat and heaps of corny dialogue. I've not even mentioned crap plot twists that can be spotted a mile off. Sadly I went back as I was looking forward to see Iko Uwais and Tony Jaa - but sadly a lot of thier efforts were squandered. In tight camera shots rendered a lot of choreography reduncant. None of fighting was seen in long shot - everything was close in and rapidly edited for crash band wallop, but I find that this limits the spectacle. Obviously this was the cheapest of the lot, they couldn't even afford anybody to write good jokes....

I look forward to Expendables 5 though as I still had fun despite the short-comings of this dorky sequel.