The Expendables
The Expendables
A CIA operative hires a team of mercenaries to eliminate a Latin dictator and a renegade CIA agent.
匚卂尺ㄥ reviewedJanuary 31, 2025
The Expendables was an excellent movie in it's original version - the only issue I had with the original version was the climax - the action sequences did not live up to what was seen at the beginning of the movie -
This new version titled The Expendables: Extended Directors Cut - does fix that issue with the ending - and the ending is far more dramatic and spectacular now - the action sequences are longer in the climax which makes the ending more satisfying.
However with this new extended cut comes a few new extra scenes at the start which kind of slow the pace down - and don't really do anything new for the plot.
For example there are some music-video type narrative scenes, if you don't know what I mean there are a number of these types of scenes in COBRA and ROCKY IV - these ruin the pace and are really not required - if a scene can be done without sticking a song over it, it should be done that way - it's just lazyness on the moviemaker's part.
Also there is a rather dumb sequence showing Dolph Lundgren's character somehow coming out of the plane that Sly and Jason Statham have travelled on to the island of Vilaina at the start of the movie (somehow Dolph managed to misaculously avoid being caught by the other 2 expendables en-route.) this only serves to ruin what were otherwise alread excellently edited scenes in the original movie. Which is why I give this an excellent 4 star rating rather than the perfect 5 it should have been.
out of the two versions I prefer the previous uncut bluray release - however this disc is still a must-buy just to see the excellent end action sequences in their newly edited form.
If Sly had simply slapped the new ending on the otherwise excellent original this would've been the perfect special edition.
This is still an excellent version to watch however and an excellent companion piece to the original movie and worthy of being part of your collection.