Critic Reviews of The Expendables

Sylvester Stallone and his fellow action heroes of the past decades will be shooting their guns this week in theaters with The Expendables. The film has been getting a lot of buzz with its all star cast, which also includes Bruce Willis, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, and Arnold Schwarzenegger found some time to leave his job as Governor of California to appear on this film. It is deemed as a return to the old-school movies of the 80s and early 90s.

The film promises that it will offer a nostalgia that has been put into shelves by the major studios after CGI effects and superhero movies rose to fame. But The Expendables is taking some slack by critics as early reviews have been released. In Rotten Tomatoes, the film has 43% rating at the Tomatometer based on 68 reviews counted, with 29 rated it Fresh and 39 Rotten, and has an average rating of 5.2 out of 10. In Metacritic, it was given mixed or average reviews with a Metascore of 40/100 based on 11 critics. These are just some of the reviews by critics:

The Hollywood Reporter (Sheri Linden): “The body count is high and the personalities click in this old-school testosterone fest.”

Entertainment Weekly (Owen Gleiberman): “The way that Stallone directs, though, every machete thrust and relentless round of bullet spray is staged with a certain undeniable… conviction… what’s distinctive - and backwardly fun - about The Expendables is that it’s completely low-tech, brute-force movie, a real meathead jamboree. There are no video-surveillance scenes, no computerized weaponry or digital gloss. The movie doesn’t have that stuff because Stallone doesn’t think that way.” Rating: B

Variety (Peter Debruge): “A hot mess – that’s what Sylvester Stallone and friends have wrought in The Expendables, a nearly incoherent all-stars-on-deck actioner that plays like Grown-Ups in nitro or a brutish, blue collar Ocean’s Eleven (which financially speaking, isn’t a bad place to be.) With no concept on the screenplay level, Stallone impressively assembles a never-before-seen tough-guy line-up the likes of which B-movies fans should feel compelled to witness firsthand. Though the muddled execution falls far short of the talent involved, the Lionsgate release is loud and explosive enough that sequels will follow.”

The Guardian (Phellim O’Neill): “See it with the rowdiest crowd possible. Sylvester Stallone’s action epic may draw on a hackeneyed plotline, but a film stuffed with heavy weight stars has goodwill and charm in abundance… It’s not particularly well-made, but the patchiness only adds to the considerable goodwill and charm of the movie carries.”

The action flick will be shown in cinemas this August 13, 2010. Or you can also watch The Expendables online.