--- ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) # The Expendables: Sly and the Family Clones by [Richard Corliss](/author/richard-corliss/) Aug 13, 2010 4:00 AM CUT  The Expendables starring Sylvester Stallone The Expendables starring Sylvester StalloneLionsgate by [Richard Corliss](/author/richard-corliss/) Aug 13, 2010 4:00 AM CUT A bunch of Somali pirates are behaving inhospitably to their captives when a bunch of heavily armed, massively muscled gents drop by and say, in so many words, Please don’t. In the ensuing firefight, all the hostages are saved and all the bad guys die — one of them getting hit with a small nuclear device (actually an AA-12 auto-assault 12-gauge shotgun) that vaporizes him from the belt up. Chalk up another successful mercenary mission for the Expendables. Sylvester Stallone must have salivated when he saw David Callaham’s original script for _The Expendables_, which asks: What if the Over the Hill Gang just blew up the freakin’ hill instead? What if the team’s next assignment were Vilena, a Caribbean country headed by a military despot (David Zayas) but really run by a megalomanical ex-CIA agent (Eric Roberts)? What if Sly’s character fell in love with the General’s idealistic daughter (Giselle Itie) and felt compelled to overthrow the country with just a few pals and enough artillery to start World War III? And what if these bad-asses were played by actors who played similar action-film characters back in Sly’s superstar era? [(See pictures of Sylvester Stallone.)](http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/10questions/0,30255,2009742,00.html "undefined") As rewritten by the 64-year-old star and director, the screenplay contains nearly a dozen roles for tough guys of a certain age, and Stallone filled the parts with actors who’ve spent a lot of time, for quite a long time, in the gym. They play ex-Special Forces types who settle international disputes in Africa and Latin America by killing evil, darker-skinned foreigners. (At least half of the stars are venerable enough to have served in Vietnam, though none of them did.) The saga of a group of old soldiers transplanted to a strange environment they have to blast their way out of, _The Expendables_ is a kind of _Toy Story 3_ on steroids. Indeed, if you collected movie action figures, you’d find almost the complete set here. Rocky and Rambo (Stallone), The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), the _Die Hard_ films’ John McClain (Bruce Willis), Ivan Drago from _Rocky IV_ (Dolph Lundgren) and Wong Fei-hung from Hong Kong’s _Once Upon a Time in China_ series (Jet Li), plus The Wrestler (Mickey Rourke), a few extreme-sports icons (Steve Austin, Randy Couture, Terry Crews) and an all-purpose sleazebag (Roberts, who filled a similar function in Stallone’s 1994 _The Specialist_). Somehow Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal didn’t make the cut. [(See the 100 best movies of all time.)](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,1953094,00.html "undefined") By my count, the seven veteran stars of _The Expendables_ are a cumulative 439 years old and have been making movies for 238 years. They’d all be greybeards by now if it weren’t for the Grecian Formula. Schwarzenegger and Stallone both started in 1970 — one with _Hercules in New York_, the other with the soft-core sex picture _The Party at Kitty and Stud’s_ (retitled _The Italian Stallion_ after _Rocky_ was a smash) — back when you could have got rich betting that fellows named Arnold and Sylvester would become Hollywood action legends. Roberts, Rourke, Willis and Li have all been in the game for at least three decades, and Lundgren got his break from Stallone a quarter-century ago as Russia’s heavyweight boxer/Golem. (Rocky’s defeat of Drago, you’ll recall, quickly led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.) Separately and together, this crowd has created a lot of film history, most of it disposable. [See TIME’s Hollywood covers.](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,1968770,00.html "undefined") [See the best movies of the decade.](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1949837%5F1949237,00.html "undefined") The reunion plays OK, partly because all the performers (Stallone especially) still look pretty fit, and partly because _The Expendables_ is a reunion not just of the stars but of their prime movies from a generation ago. Here we have the R-rated violence, the bonding of macho males, the hairy stunts achieved mostly by real people rather than CGI technicians. This integrity, Hollywood-style, produces some nicely managed action scenes: two vigorous auto chases and crashes; the strafing of a dock full of disposable soldiers, with Sly flying the plane and Statham firing at them from a slit in the nose; and the final arms-race Armageddon (using Rio de Janeiro’s magnificent Parque Lage residence as a backdrop), which features such eye-catching combat as Statham punching a Vilena villain who’s engulfed in flames. Basically a feature-length PSA for the Second Amendment, _The Expendables_ allows only one debate on weaponry: whether bullets or knives are more effective. A bullet moves faster, but can be used only once; a knife can be extracted from the neck of one victim and used to open the gut of another. [(See the top 10 movies of 2009.)](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1945379%5F1943915,00.html "undefined") For all the good will the enterprise engenders, it’d be nice if the dialogue allowed the actors to make some emotional connection to their roles and to one another. Too many scenes have anemic punch lines, or go on forever. Rourke, as a retired Expendable who’s now the group’s booker, gets an endless soliloquy that’s shot in such intense closeups that Stallone must have thought the actor was a sure bet for another Oscar nomination, instead of a Razzie. We do give points to Lundgren, as the one truly expendable Expendable (hard drugs have made him untrustworthy), because he calls the kick-boxing Li “Happy Feet,” he manages to use “insect” as a curse word and he has the snarliest grimace and prettiest teeth in the business. There’s also a decent exchange in the one scene involving Stallone, Willis (as a CIA boss who wants to stop Roberts) and Schwarzenegger (as an ex-Expendable he’s ready to offer the job to. Arnold: “I’m busy now. Give it to my friend. He loves playing in the jungle.” Bruce (to Sly): “What’s his problem?” Sly: “He wants to be President.” Like too many recent action movies, _The Expendables_ ends with the main cast reconvened for the promise or threat of a sequel — which virtually guarantees there won’t be one, considering the underwhelming box-office fates of the year’s other films that used this ploy: _The A-Team, Kick-Ass, The Last Airbender, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice_ and _Prince of Persia_. Stallone’s film is not essential; it’s expendable. What he says in the movie is true of its stars: “If the money’s good, we don’t care what the job is.” But since Sly and his old, old pals have asked you to attend their lawn pageant at the Motion Picture Fund rest home, it would be churlish to refuse their invitation. What you will find is both familiar in its contours and unique in its casting: the definitive alterkocker action picture. Call it _The Old Dogs of War_, or _Incontinent Basterds_. [See TIME’s Pictures of the Week.](http://www.time.com/time/picturesoftheweek "undefined") [See the Cartoons of the Week.](http://www.time.com/time/cartoonsoftheweek "undefined") The Expendables: Sly and the Family Clones ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6911026/the-expendables-sly-and-the-family-clones/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6911026/the-expendables-sly-and-the-family-clones/"},"headline":"The Expendables: Sly and the Family Clones","datePublished":"2010-08-13T04:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-22T16:18:32.562Z","description":"A bunch of Somali pirates are behaving inhospitably to their captives when a bunch of heavily armed, massively muscled gents drop by and say, in...","url":"https://time.com/archive/6911026/the-expendables-sly-and-the-family-clones/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5b5812c4c570b933/698a4b77db29872cfa26a87f/360_expendables_0811.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Richard Corliss","url":"https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5b5812c4c570b933/698a4b77db29872cfa26a87f/360_expendables_0811.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"360_expendables_0811.jpg","caption":"The Expendables starring Sylvester Stallone","creditText":"Lionsgate","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6911026/the-expendables-sly-and-the-family-clones/","name":"The Expendables: Sly and the Family Clones"}}]}] ```