Review of The Expendables, the fourth installment of the action saga, directed by Scott Waugh (Need for Speed) with Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham and Megan Fox. Premiering on September 29.
Major disappointment with the new installment of Los mercenarios titled Los mercen4rios, or Expend4bles if you prefer it in its original version. The franchise shows lethal symptoms of exhaustion that make it possible to consider only one possible future of survival: that of spin-offs.
Scott Waugh responsible for a handful of films among which is the not particularly memorable Need for Speed (to put it elegantly), he is in charge of directing this fourth installment that begins with a turning point in the saga: the group loses its two leaders and has to make a living on his own to complete a mission that tries to prevent a Third World War.
That it took three thinking heads to come up with such a weak script says a lot about the film. The worst miscalculation is taking advantage of the R rating to introduce crude and crude jokes with much less grace than intended instead of giving wings to more explicit and realistic violence.. Which at the end of the day was what the audience will expect.
A plane crash, an atomic bomb and changes in the hierarchy
Barney goes in search of Christmas to meet him for a new mission: the action takes them to Libya at Marsh’s request.
In a former Gaddafi chemical weapons plant there are some very dangerous nuclear missile detonators that are about to fall into the hands of Rahmat, a former British arms dealer who has his own private army and works for a certain Ocelot, a old and powerful enemy from Barney’s past.
If he gets his way, he could try to set off bombs on the border, triggering an international conflict of global magnitude. While they are trying to stop him, Barney suffers a spectacular accident, leaving the team without a leader, who fails in his intention to stop Rahmat.
In addition to overcoming the loss of the irreplaceable Barney, Christmas will be separated for having put his will before the joint objective and the direct orders of his superior. This will blind you with anger and lead you to seek revenge.
As for the others, their next objective will be to intercept the Jantara freighter in which an atomic bomb is prepared to activate and unleash chaos. For this they will have new faces on the team and a change in the hierarchy.
Many deficiencies and few joys
If you’ve followed the saga so far, you’ll have enjoyed the revival of many old action glories that have passed through here. From The Mercenaries to The Mercenaries 2 and The Mercenaries 3 we have had very fun shows with a very meta sense of humor, cool action sequences and very entertaining plots.
The mercenaries It no longer leaves that feeling of a product for cinemas, but rather a direct release for the domestic market. Even Stallone seems to have lost faith in his product and turns sideways, appearing for only a few minutes of the footage. He already assured at the time that this would be the last film in which he would be involved.
It is true that Jason Statham He is a worthy successor in the physical section, he has charisma and a magnet for the box office (he has even attracted an audience to The Megalodon 2).
But this change is not enough to revive the product because it is surrounded by many bad decisions: Megan Fox’s role could not be more inappropriate and insufferable in a movie with a predictable plot full of bad jokes and characters that come out of nowhere. The quality of the special effects is conspicuous by its absence and there is not an iota of ingenuity in the script lines.
It is perceived that The Mercenaries 4 It is a second-rate production from the first moment and that feeling lasts in each shot until reaching a laughable ending in which the green screens sing everywhere
In a year with such powerful entries in this genre as John Wick 4 or Mission Impossible: Deadly Sentence Part 1, it couldn’t be more hopeless.
VALUATION:
The worst film in the franchise by far: the humor is awful, the plot predictable and the special effects could very well be improved. There are characters that appear out of nowhere and the talent of some secondary characters who have performed wonderfully in other action films is wasted. It could have been released domestically directly.
THE BEST:
Jason Statham’s hand-to-hand fights, the only one who shows off something in the film.
WORST:
Megan Fox’s role is that of a guard judge and it is also a crime to waste Iko Uwais like this. The terrible green screen and the failed humor.
