Barney Ross (Stallone) is the leader of a group of elite mercenaries made up of Lee Christmas (Statham), Yin Yang (Li), Toll Road (Couture), Gunnar Jensen (Lundgren), Hale Caesar (Crews), and Tool (Rourke). After taking out a group of pirates, a very lucrative suicide mission presents itself in the form of Mr. Church (Willis). Too busy to take on the mission, Trench (Schwarzenegger) declines, leaving Stallone and his team to fly to the island of Vilena (oh, I see what you did there!) to overthrow the dictator, General Garza (David Zayas). Once there, Ross is immediately enthralled with their contact, a beautiful woman by the name of Sandra (Gisele Itié). Things progressive in pretty typical action fashion with some pointing out many plot similarities to Rambo. Not that there's all that many plot points other than blow up the bad guys and save the day.
Despite all those interesting character names, this movie is about the stars, starring the stars, and not the characters they might be pretending to portray. This is one big macho fest of action heroes doing what they do best. Despite this, somehow I wish there was more. There is plenty of action, but it lacks that extra adrenaline needed to really explode. What little plot that exists is partially obscured through undecipherable expository mumbles by Stallone who often makes David Duchovny look like a great orator.
I had a fun time watching this action flick, but in the end it wasn't all that great of a movie. Anyone expecting anything other than a bunch of guys beating each other up for a couple hours should turn around and walk the other way. There would be nothing wrong with a movie like that except, as I said, for as much star power fueling it, the non-stop action stalls a few too many times. Fun flick, but mostly forgettable.
*** (3/5 stars)
Interesting, I was wondering how this movie would pan out. I guess they didn't spend enough on pyrotechnics =D
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