103 min | R | September 22, 2023 | Lionsgate
A mercenary crew chases a stolen nuclear payload across the South China Sea while Barney Ross and Lee Christmas trade insults between firefights. The franchise reloads with a new face behind the camera and a roster of fresh muscle. The result aims for the gut and hits nothing.
Lee Christmas and Barney Ross run their crew of aging mercenaries on another contract. A terrorist named Rahmat steals nuclear detonators. The Expendables get hired to stop him before the payload reaches the wrong hands. The film positions itself as a meat-and-potatoes throwback to practical action and hard violence. What it actually delivers is a weightless assembly of gunfire and grunting that never finds a reason to exist beyond the brand on the poster.
Jason Statham plays Lee Christmas as the only person on screen who behaves like he means it. He throws punches with intent and reads his one-liners with the timing of a man who knows the material is beneath him. Sylvester Stallone drifts through his Barney Ross scenes on autopilot before exiting early. 50 Cent plays Drew Farrell with a permanent smirk and nothing to do. Megan Fox plays Gina as a tough operative the script keeps reducing to a girlfriend subplot. Dolph Lundgren plays Gunner Jensen drunk and squinting through a sniper scope, a running gag stretched past the point of function. Tony Jaa and Iko Uwais are the most gifted physical performers in the cast and the film wastes them on stunt doubles and digital trickery.
Scott Waugh directs from a script by Kurt Wimmer and Tad Daggerhart. Waugh built his name on real cars and real crashes, which makes the choice baffling. The action is drowned in cheap composited backgrounds and computer-generated blood that floats off bodies like a video game cutscene. Editor sleight of hand chops the fight choreography into incoherent fragments that hide rather than showcase what Jaa and Uwais can do. The shipboard climax unfolds against green-screen seas so artificial the actors seem to be performing inside a screensaver.
The first Expendables sold itself on grizzled stars doing their own brutal work in front of a camera. This entry abandons that premise and replaces it with digital shortcuts and a cast that mostly cannot be bothered. Statham fights to drag the thing toward watchability and loses. The movie has no curiosity about its own characters and no craft behind its violence. It is a product manufactured to keep a number in a title alive, and it shows in every frame.