The Expendables is an action movie with 1000% the budget of Killer Tattoo, and yet it manages to be 2000% less interesting. Someone managed to get all these old action stars signed up to do the movie and then washed their hands of the whole process. "We don't need to have a plot or dialogue or anything, right? I mean, we're going to have Swartzenegger on screen for 30 seconds, that's enough. Just make some stuff blow up and have some fights."
I mean, as I often protest, I love blowy-up-stuff and fights. But most fight movies have a consistent fight style. The traditional Hong Kong-style, for example, is very acrobatic and stylized. There are movies with cartoonish, over-the-top gore. And there are more realistic, and disturbing, fight styles—the sudden sickening crunch of bone and all. This movie mixes all three, seemingly at random. A fight is going along all slap-slap-slap, martial arts back and forth and then <crunch> there's a bone sticking out of someone's arm or whatever. Gross and weird.
The plot is laughable, the dialogue ridiculous, and the actors know and are embarrassed by it.
There is a scene for the record books, however, as Mickey Rourke and Slyvester Stallone have the most unrealistic tattooing scene EVER. Rourke sort of dabs at Stallone's back with a tattoo gun for about 30 seconds, while Stallone is shifting all over the place, and then viola, he's done with perfect lettering!
FuzzyCo grade: D-
