12% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 110 reviews)
Runtime: 103 minutes
Directed by: Scott Waugh
Starring: Plenty of people who I feel sorry for that they were in this abomination
From: Lionsgate
Somehow this travesty was even worse than I was led to believe. The unenviable task of having to see Expend4bles (what a “great” title) couldn’t be put off for any longer. I felt obligated to as the first three were viewed theatrically; unlike many, I enjoyed the first two for being the silly nonsense they were. After all, the villain of 2 was Jean-Claude Van Damme as JEAN VILAIN. The action delivered so I was happy… despite those films not being quite like the actual 80’s action flicks I’ll always love. 3 was disappointing, and not just because the PG-13 rating was astoundingly stupid; the story was lame crap. After enduring 4, the memories of 3 suddenly shine brighter…
Even before I’ve heard all the negative opinions in the past week, it was a film I had strong reservations about. The trailers were WTF bad, although I always say that those can be misleading. “Megan Fox in a prominent role” was a bigger issue for me. Instead of writing paragraphs explaining why she is loathed by me, instead I’ll mention that she is someone despised both personally and professionally. She can’t act and in terms of personal preferences, she has had as much plastic surgery as a Kardashian, meaning that by now she barely looks like a living, breathing human being so just having to look at her was a painful task. Turns out, even worse than that was the loathsome character she played.
As for the plot—who cares, really? The movie didn’t seem to care all that much about the crap it was presenting. Things happen that you’d expect in a bad direct to video action film-including focusing the action on only several different locations, there are audience-insulting “plot twists”, the end. The fact that Expend4bles uses more than one 2023 movie trope that I find to be awful was incredibly disappointing.
Most disappointing, though: the “special” effects. The Flash had some moments that looked horrid, but they weren’t always atrocious like what was presented here. I couldn’t believe the film was allowed to be released in this state. The claimed production costs were 100 million dollars, which made the CG all the more shocking. AFAIK, the reason why the budget is so high is because the production has been in gestation since shortly after the third film was released. Although, the “money laundering” theory I’ve seen bandied about can’t be ruled out…
What a charmless, miserable experience this was. Many of the actors didn’t even look like they particularly wanted to be there. The story was astoundingly bad; I ended up not caring about most of what was on screen. Compounding the problem was that with the action, it was shot too close & was too shaky, so that sucked. It looked like Tony Jaa and Iko Uwais did some cool things, but I can’t say that w/ authority. The new characters made little impact; it was the script leaving them out to dry rather than the actors. The final 10 minutes in particular made me angry. But I’ve said too much about what is truthfully one of the worst movies I’ve ever endured theatrically; I raise my pinkie finger towards it!
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