Even the best of us can overstay our welcome…

In the theatres now; Expend4bles is proof that you can only get so much blood from a stone as this franchise ultimately peaked back when there was just two installments in what is ultimately a poorly written and corny mess that is designed to get foreign box offices excited about Hollywood rolling out these action stars one too many times.

A new generation join the world’s top action stars for an adrenaline-fueled adventure in Expend4bles. Reuniting as the team of elite mercenaries, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, and Sylvester Stallone are joined for the first time by Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Megan Fox, Tony Jaa, Iko Uwais, Jacob Scipio, Levy Tran, and Andy Garcia. Armed with every weapon they can get their hands on and the skills to use them, The Expendables are the world’s last line of defense and the team that gets called when all other options are off the table. But new team members with new styles and tactics are going to give “new blood” a whole new meaning.

Basically forgetting that the 3^rd one (which wasn’t very good either) even happened, Expend4bles is just a trope filled mess that telegraphs a lot and misses out on some genuinely interesting story opportunities and just finds its way to the laziest possible conclusions.

I’ll be more than willing to admit that in all honesty, I’m more than happy to give director Scott Waugh a pass on this one because he’s certainly competent enough to stage some pretty solid action and even as green screen moments take over for budgetary concerns there’s still quite a bit of visual fun to be had with this one as the set pieces are fun and in keeping with the franchise.

Sadly it’s in the writing where we get down with this movie.   While we’ll certainly capitulate that none of these films we’re written for anyone who lives and dies by the New York Times ‘Arts & Culture’ section, they at least had real structure and care in telling a genuine narrative arc.  In this one, Stallone DOESN’T have a say in the script and sadly it shows as screenwriters Kurt Wimmer, Tad Daggerhart and Max Adams give us the most paint by numbers affair possible as it doesn’t take us long to simply not give a damn about anything that’s going on simply because it telegraphs its own arc about 20 min into the move.

Sure Stallone, Statham, Lundgren & Couture get by on the already established banter and charm that came out from the other 3 movies, but we’re also subjected to a plethora of new  faces that range from laughably bad all the way to you forgetting that they were actually in this movie in the first place.  Overlooking the addition of Megan Fox as a fellow ‘Expendable’ and the 19 year age difference as she rolls around in her underwear with Statham, there isn’t a single thing in this poorly written script that actually makes us care about what these characters are going through.  It’s all two dimensional and honestly…boring.

The franchise and these stars actually deserved better than Expend4bles as we’ve seen all these people make better movies working with far less assets.  It’s 103 min of talented people stealing money, just make sure they don’t steal yours.