EXPEND4BLES (2023) *** ½

So, the word on the street for Expendfourbles has been downright toxic.  The meager box office totals labeled it a complete bomb.  Did that shake my belief in my beloved franchise?  Not really.  Sure, the lack of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis was disheartening (although I can’t blame Bruce for sitting this one out, all things considered), but I still went in hoping for the best. 

In their place with have 50 Cent and Megan Fox as the new Expendfourbles.  Not exactly Mickey Rourke and Terry Crews, are they?  Still, they have enough cred to make them, at the very least, honorary Expendfourbles.  Cent was in Escape Plan with Sly and Arnold, and Fox was in Midnight in the Switchgrass with Bruce.  I guess there were worse choices out there.  

The big news was the additions of Tony Jaa and Iko Uwais.  As a massive fan of The Protector and The Raid, their inclusion took the sting out of missing some of the bigger names.  Besides, even though he’s the villain, and they don’t really make the best use of his talents, Uwais still gets more to do here than he did in The Force Awakens.

The scuttlebutt of the Hollywood rumor mill (not to mention the “and” billing) sorta implied Sly was gonna die in this one.  Now, I don’t want to spoil anything for you, but he makes his entrance on a motorcycle with the word “Resurrection” emblazoned on it.  So, yeah.  Maybe don’t get the hankies out just yet.

Uwais is a baddie who goes to “Gaddafi’s Old Chemical Weapons Plant” (I’m not kidding, that’s what the text at the bottom of the screen says) to get detonators for a bomb that can start World War III.  The Expendfourbles are called in, and fuck up big time, which means Christmas (Jason Statham) is taken off team.  The rest of the team have to stop him from completing the bomb, and when they are captured, Christmas finds an old ex-Expendfourble (Jaa) to plan a rescue mission.

This is definitely a step down from Parts 1 and 3.  (There’s no way it was going to touch Part 2, which for my money, is still one of greatest movies of all time.)  However, it is far from the disaster critics have made it out to be.  After the watered-down PG-13 Part 3, it was good to have a bunch of F-bombs and bloody violent deaths aplenty back in the series.  We get bloody knife wounds, decapitations, and smoldering corpses, just to name a few.  

Yes, Sly is largely absent from the proceedings.  That means Statham does most of the heavy lifting, which is perfectly fine by me, especially when we get to see him fighting alongside Jaa and getting into fisticuffs with Uwais.  The other team members are enjoyable too.  Dolph Lungren gets some fun moments and Randy Couture is handed the bulk of the comic relief (which admittedly, isn’t all that funny).  As for the other big addition to the cast, Andy Garcia chews the scenery gamely as the team’s new CIA handler.  The big surprise I guess was that Fox wasn’t nearly as bad as I was anticipating as the new team leader.  In fact, it felt like the filmmakers knew this might be the last one, so they were trying to combine the abandoned Statham spin-off “The Expendables:  A Christmas Story” and the all-girl Expendables spin-off, “The Expendabelles” into one movie, which I’m perfectly OK with. 

Overall, Expendfourbles gives you your money’s worth and keeps the old Golan-Globus macho brand of filmmaking alive, at least for another year.  Action icons kill bad guys and make funny quips after.  Stuff blows up real good.  And there’s at least one jaw-dropping action scene where Statham plays chicken on a machine gun-mounted motorcycle that harkens back to the insanity of his Transporter 2 days.  What can I say?   I had fun.

As far as Sly’s Part 4’s goes, it’s no Rocky 4 or Rambo 4, but then again, what could be?  For rabid action fans, there’s plenty here to like.  Bottom Line:  I would say it’s highly recommend4ble.

AKA:  The Expendables 4.