The last few Sylvester Stallone movies has seen him in something of a renaissance as he performed as Rambo and Rocky, both of which were better efforts than I would have considered him capable of, but then they were known characters for which we had some affinity. The big question is as to whether the aging, muscle-bound and expressionless action man could get all of his old pals together and make something explosive and worth watching, or would it be a creaking pastiche with egos clashing at every turn?

The cast was a thing to behold in itself, Stallone, Willis, Schwarzenegger, Rourke, Lundgren, hick kicking Jet Li, the latest wrestling movie convert ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin, and Jason Statham who comes over as a knife throwing challenge to Stallone’s shooting prowess in the ‘gang’ of Expendables. Arnie has the good sense to bale out early after an appalling few lines of verbal diarrhoea with Sly and Willis, the latter also steering clear of the action.

So what of the plot then, well that kicks off in the aforesaid engagement between Sly and Willis (playing a CIA instigator) who wants a dictator and his cohorts on the island of Vilena removed from power. Eric Roberts plays the drugs chief James Munroe, who is driving the General (played by David Zayas) into oppressing the people of Vilena, but they have set up some opposition by way of the General’s daughter Sandra (Giselle Itie). Stallone and Statham visit the island in the first instance to perform a recce and see if the job is worth taking, and after seemingly wiping out the entire army between them they just about escape and leave a reluctant Sandra behind - who is soon captured. At this point we get some pitiful effort at self-searching for leaving Sandra by Stallone and some mumbled hokum and sniffling from Rourke (who does at least come out of it with some credibility) about soul saving, result…..Stallone is going back to rescue her all by himself….but guess what, the gang is all going too. Hell the macho camaraderie almost snuffs out the stink of testosterone. Cue everything being blown up, body parts and claret everywhere, and just when you think there can be no more baddies to fight, out they come to perform their gyrations as they are kicked, punched, slashed, stabbed, hewn, and rent asunder……I’m pretty sure some more than once.

What happened here is a pretty straightforward; Stallone wanted a kind of super-macho war extravaganza, with explosions and gore in an action packed glorious tribute to the old movies of the genre. Unfortunately it does not quite succeed; instead it comes out as a series of ever more brutal affronts on the enemy with no depth or charisma and so many explosions you almost feel fatigued by it all. The forced humour (such as it is) and the attempts to make the gang come across as super pals is almost the ruin of the film in itself, and it only stays afloat at all because of the nostalgic qualities and I guess the action. I am still puzzled as to Stallone’s almost fatherly hand off of action sequences to Statham, who has the greater chunk of screen time whilst others such as Jet Li were underused.

4.0/10 A surprisingly poor outing given the cast, though you have to expect that a Stallone film with action figures is not going to win any Oscars, even so it needed something more than explosions to fill the void. There was a chance for this to be perhaps a little more humorous or irreverent, but it takes itself way too seriously and loses its appeal as a result. Oddly I just heard Stallone is planning a sequel, given their ages by the time it will be made ‘The Extosterones’ perhaps?