Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) leads the "Expendables", a band of highly skilled mercenaries including knife enthusiast Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), martial arts expert Yin Yang (Jet Li), heavy weapons specialist Hale Caesar and loose-cannon sniper Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundgren). When the group is commissioned by the mysterious Mr. Church to assassinate the merciless dictator of a small South American island, Barney and Lee head to the remote locale to scout out their opposition. Once there, they meet with local rebel Sandra and discover the true nature of the conflict engulfing the city. When they escape the island and Sandra stays behind, Ross must choose to either walk away and save his own life - or attempt a suicidal rescue mission that might just save his soul.

Ladies, there isn't much for us in this movie. This is pure action film, made in old style – many explosions, shooting, throwing knives, typical villains, chick that needs to be rescued and pissed off Stallone. But what's new here is that the cast really is impressive – Stallone brought together most of the action heroes – including fairly new hero in the genre Mickey Rourke, the heir of the action legacy Jason Statham (and thank God for his presence in this movie, because if he wasn't in it, we, the girls, would have nothing to look at). Even Bruce Willis and governor of California make appearance, which is brief but hilarious. I'm not very aware of who exactly Steve Austin and Randy Couture are, needles to say they kick ass in this movie. Everybody does.

The film is of course predictable, as action scenes are aswell, but some of them – including the plane sequence, Statham stabbing and shooting people simultaneously and Austin/Sly fight near the end are very impressive. I don't even wanna dwell in injuries those guys probably suffered during filming it, but it says on imdb Sly broke his neck during this scene. Having seen what went down there, he is lucky it's all that happened.. The movie has a lot of action scenes but the one that definitely stayed in my head was the one where Statham beats the crap out of the guy, who hit his ex girlfriend, and his friends. Now that made me cheer.

Even action movie like that needs women and apparently for most of those guys they are important – Rourke's character is a mess because of one, Statham's ready to defend his girl even if she cheated on him (why she did something that stupid I can't understand) and Sly is ready to go to some God forsaken shithole to save one. Of course, the girls are typical action movie eye candy – Sandra, the one who needs rescue wears sexy dress during water boarding scene. And although she yells and cries, she remains brave, as the cliches of action cinema demand her to be.

Only the most well known guys get some character development. In the opposite team Eric Roberts shines as usual as the villain of the story – does he ever play nice people? Rourke is mixing some stuff here – he's a bit like artist, a bit like fighter, a bit like psychopath. The result was not too good. Li and Couture bring a lot of humor, but the funniest scenes go to great duo Statham/Stallone. They are awesome together and Stallone may be a star, given that he wrote, directed and acted in it, but Statham steals the show. I wanted to type those words before the movie began and I'm so glad it's true and I don't need to lie. Some reviewers even say that he is the only one in the cast who has charisma. With that I don't agree – Stallone is 64 years old and even though he doesn't look too good and I suspect plastic surgeons should take the blame for that, the man does shit in this movie, that I would not have strength to do even If I was a guy. And I'm only 21. Not only is he the driving force of “The Expendables” but he is totally convincing in action scenes. Amazing.

I suspect boys will like this movie more than I did, I watched it only as Statham's fangirl and as one I'm mighty disappointed he didn't take off his shirt even for a second here. The second disappointment was that the movie doesn't use extremely catchy song from the trailer (Shinedown – “Diamond Eyes”). But it was still fun to watch, because the film doesn't give you a chance to be bored – the bullets fly (but are they faster than knives?), the punches are thrown and here it is, finally an action movie with funny scenes and jokes. It was great because I laughed when I was supposed to laugh, not as with last “Rambo” when I laughed each time Sly killed something using bow and arrow. If you are a fan of some of the guys in the cast, or you love action movies you should go and see it. Scratch that – if you are a guy, go and see it!

60/100