Expend4bles - A Shallow AF Review
Tired of pretentious film reviews banging on about "character arcs" and "thematic resonance" when all you want to know is if the explosions look cool? Welcome to "Shallow As Fuck Movie Reviews" – for people who'd rather enjoy films than dissect them like frogs in a biology class. We won't bore you with film-school waffle about "mise-en-scène" or "negative space" – just straight talk about whether it's worth two hours of your increasingly precious life. Consider us the antidote to critics who think wearing black turtlenecks somehow makes their opinions matter more than yours.
The Expendables 4 - or "Expend4bles" as no one with functioning brain cells is calling it - marks the fourth instalment in Sylvester Stallone's retirement fund collection, cleverly disguised as an action franchise.
The previous trilogy wasn't exactly challenging Dostoevsky for philosophical depth (translation: they were dumber than a rock in boxing gloves), but they were enjoyable enough romps. So what about this fourth cash extraction exercise?
It's fucking awful. Not just garden-variety terrible, but the sort of cinematic catastrophe that makes you question whether everyone involved lost a particularly nasty bet.
The plot unfolds with all the suspense and mystery of a motorway exit sign, and the "twists" are about as surprising as finding beans in a tin of beans.
The soundtrack appears to have been composed by someone actively trying to get fired, achieving the remarkable feat of making elevator music sound like Beethoven by comparison. It's only redeeming quality is that you could buy the soundtrack album as a cure for insomnia.
The special effects department clearly spent their budget on lunch, particularly the CGI blood spurts that look like someone attacked the film with MS Paint circa 1998. Half the movie was so obviously green-screened that I began to wonder if the actors had ever actually met each other.
Do yourself a favour worthy of sainthood – give this one a wide berth.
I'd give it one finger out of five. And yes, it's exactly the finger you're thinking of.
