Film Journal 2023: Expendables 4

Film Journal 2023: Expendables 4
Directed by Scott Waugh


We are long ways from the novelty of the first film in this now iconic action franchise. Back in 2010 this played legitimately into the changing face of cinema, bringing together the fading action heroes of the 80s and 90s with the emerging stars of the 2000’s. It was unapolegetically nostalgic, but in a way that felt fitting as a necessary transition.

In 2023 however, it doesn’t really work. In fact, I could make the case that the way this film plays into those past tropes even feels a bit gross and borderline offensive in the way it glorifies violence and objectifies/sexualizes it’s clear gender stereotypes. If Micheal Bay did much the same with the equally iconic Transformers series, at least there the mythology has substance. Expendables 4 thinks it’s making a clever commentary on the action films of old translating into a modern context, when it is really mired in the very things it should be critiquing. Feels crazy to say, but the whole Rambo series feels like Shakespeare when compared to this.

It’s too bad too, because there were moments here that could have worked. There was opportunity to explore the whole Expendables becoming expendable idea, and the film makes an early plot choice that allows it to gear itself away from the “group” and turn it’s attention to a more intimate examination of its (potentially) most human faces. The small moments when it manages to commit to this showed some sparks of life in the muddled nature of its green screen blow em up sequences and painful dialogue. The finale ultimately makes the biggest move to eventually blow up this potential once and for all, but truth be told it was undercutting itself the whole way through. Didn’t help either that beyond the select key figures, I don’t think any of the faces of the group actually reflect a real draw or sense of personal investment.

There is a sense in which the original Expendables was playing on the larger reality of a changing world when it comes to the action stars of old and new. This film feels like it’s playing as a commentary on the existing trilogy, which last existed in 2014. Again, there was potential there given that Statham, once the young emergent star, is now facing the same fate. But there is nothing in this film that feels even remotely aware of the present state of the action film, and I think it’s a stretch to believe that the franchise itself can justify its own existence.