Jason Statham and Sylvester Stallone are back with the fourth installation of The Expendables franchise, as the mercenaries try to prevent nuclear war. It’s been nearly a decade since their previous adventures, and some new faces have joined the fray, including Tony Jaa, Iko Uwais, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson and Megan Fox. With Expend4bles now showing in theaters, the critics are here to provide us with more information about what — in addition to sexy fight scenes between Statham and Fox — we can expect to get out of the movie.
While some people were excited about The Expendables 4 following early screenings, most of the first reactions featured strongly worded opinions about why this is the weakest of the tetralogy. Now that the critics are able to expand on their initial thoughts, let’s see what they’re saying. Frank Scheck of THR writes that this fourth offering takes the franchise to new lows, and despite some welcome doses of humor (however lame), it’s time to stick a fork in this series. Scheck continues:
Expend4bles (the spell check on my computer is now on the verge of exploding) betrays its viewers with an early fake-out and other plot twists so annoyingly obvious that they could only have been devised by a bad screenwriter. Or in this case, three bad screenwriters. ‘But who cares about plot or character development in a B-movie such as this?’ you might ask. ‘Aren’t the non-stop action and gratuitous violence the whole point?’ Well, yes, they are. And on that front, the movie disappoints as well, its limited budget revealing itself through so many poorly executed CGI and green screen shots that you begin longing for the gritty realism of Henry Winkler’s Fonzie jumping the shark on Happy Days.
Courtney Howard of AV Club says forget the terrorists; the most dangerous foes in this movie are boredom and obsolescence. For a property that had a lot of potential for sequels, it’s disheartening to see it face such creative bankruptcy, the critic says. Howard grades is a D-, continuing:
The team of grizzled, chiseled action heroes (minus Terry Crews and Jet Li) reunites for another covert operation, picking up a few new recruits along the way, but the filmmakers forget to add any sense of light-hearted fun, nostalgia or ingenuity. It’s a maddening mix of squandered opportunities and baffling creative choices. Lackluster on practically every level, this ought to be renamed The Disposables as it’s a giant waste of everyone’s time and talent.
IndieWire’s David Ehrlich isn’t quite so harsh in his assessment, giving it the grade of a C. He describes Expend4bles as having a script that “feels like it was written by a frat boy trying to plagiarize Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty” and CGI so bad it looks less natural than Avatar: The Way of Water. However, it seems to be perfectly at peace with being this stupid. Ehrlich explains:
Expend4bles makes no excuses for itself. From the moment its opening chyron locates the action at ‘Gaddafi’s old chemical plant’ (a hilariously casual way of describing an abandoned Libyan factory, and one made that much funnier by the later scene in which a toothpick-chewing Andy Garcia refers back to it as ‘Gaddafi’s old chemical plant’), this movie is fully committed to the same ‘who gives a fuck?’ attitude that sustains its characters in the face of certain death. You think you don’t care about Expend4bles? Just wait until you see how little this thing cares about itself. It’s kind of awesome.
Katie Walsh of the L.A. Times says director Scott Waugh doesn’t take advantage of what he has to work with, because not even legendary martial artists Tony Jaa and Iko Uwais can help Expend4bles. In Walsh’s words:
The action is messy and hard to follow, and a few shots seem stitched together with but a single pixel and a prayer. As Christmas chortles atop an all-terrain vehicle while wielding a .50 caliber weapon, it looks like the whole thing could have been shot with rear projection, the green-screen work is so shoddy. The moment is so incredibly bad and unbelievably wacky that one simply has to laugh in disbelief.
Simon Thompson of IGN rates the movie an “Awful” 3 out of 10, saying the actors look almost embarrassed to deliver their clunky and uninspired dialogue. It’s a pale imitation of the movies that came before it, Thompson says, writing:
Expend4bles is a crushing disappointment that lacks any of the nostalgia, charisma, and charm that made the franchise appealing in the first place. Perhaps worst of all, this failed mission is boring. There is no pleasure taken in saying this once highly entertaining action franchise is well past its AARPrime. It would have been great to have rounded the series off with a fifth entry, but after this flat and uninspired effort, the franchise doesn’t deserve that last hoorah.
The critics seem to be in agreement about this one, as The Expendables 4 is coming in at just 15% on Rotten Tomatoes from 54 critiques so far. However, if you’re a fan of the franchise and want to see the gang in action, Expend4bles is in theaters now for you to check out for yourself and draw your own conclusions. Either way, be sure to take a peek at our 2023 movie schedule to start planning your next trip to the theater.