The Expendables

Tattoos! Knives! Guns! Beards! Just four of the things you'll catch regular glimpses of as The Expendables meanders lumpenly across your field of vision. They're all attached to erstwhile action movie stars including Sly, Dolph, and Arnie - apart from those adorning the odd current star (Jet Li, Jason Statham). Make no mistake, these are men. They don't cry, they don't get scared and they don't have any desire that can't be satisfied in a vehicle workshop.

In her seminal 1985 book Between Men, Eve Kosofsky-Sedgwick described homosociality, the desire for platonic friendship with the same sex. Although these relationships are - like that between a politician and his special adviser - non-sexual, Sedgwick describes how, for example:

What goes on at football games [and] in fraternities.... can look, with only a slight shift of optic, quite startlingly “homosexual”... For a man to be a man’s man is separated only by an invisible, carefully blurred, already-always-crossed line from being “interested” in men.

You can tell this book is from the 80s because of its trendy deconstructive langauge. Similarly, you can tell The Expendables is from the 80s, culturally if not literally, because of its stars, its south American dictator baddie, and its action-man dialogue. The dialogue in particular is so terrible, and so poorly delivered, that if this film had any hint of a sense of humour you might mistake it for an 80s action movie pastiche.

Anyway, the reason I mention Between Men is because the characters in The Expendables are profoundly homosocial. Their views of women are obtained solely from fairy tales. They're incapable of conversing on any level other than grunts and punches. Visibly more relaxed in the company of their bicep-flexing colleagues, they bemoan their bad luck with the ladies between knives thrown at a dartboard, deep down relieved that they don't have to make forced conversation with members of the fairer sex. When Bruce Willis makes a jibe to Arnie and Sly about their sucking each others' dicks, I almost expected them to get down and do just that. Not even a slight shift in optic required here. (What a scene that would have been!)

With all the narrative complexity, subtle thematics and polished segueways of  a Dan Brown novel clunking from one hackneyed scene to the next, the film fails to be saved even by the fight and chase scenes (which are of course the whole point of the movie). The Green Zone style shaky handheld camera means you never get the opportunity to admire the grand scale of these set pieces. So I'm afraid there really is nothing to recommend this film. Do yourself a favour and watch Commando instead - or, better, dig out Total Recall and enjoy an 80s action movie with a story, some three-dimensional characters and a sense of humour.