And now for the first time since October 2009, we now come back to the warm comforting embrace that is an leisurely film review. It has been many many months since last we destroyed the pompous, battled against incorrigible acting and wonder how much can a hollywood film really cost given you can get a green screen starters kit from Argos for £69.99.

And yet I feel compelled to begin our trip down the silver screen’s river of sludge with a troubling statement. There comes a point in everyone’s life where we’re going to feel a lot older, more useless, unable to understand where it’s gone wrong with the world, why so much has changed and so much remains the same, yet we’re not quite ready for the scrapheap.

This is the point of a mid-life crisis one might say, where we’re sort of in-between the years of youth, and the steady destruction of our minds and bodies all becomes too clear, where we then strive for a few last times to relive past glory, get that Harley Davidson scooter, score with hot 20-something girls (or have fun with “Parm-erla” and her five sisters when that fails), and we sing along to dreary music by Radiohead.

Maybe that’s the reason the Expensables, sorry Expendables exist. Allow me to explain….

Yes, the action man band got together finally after 70,000 years of waiting for Sly Stallone to pick up the phone to say something no one understands to create the ultimate action movie, damn, I feel more of a man just thinking about all those hard bastards blowing everything up, firing every gun known to exist, and saving so many bloody sexy women, they should just float along on a river of blood and tits.

Plot? You want a Plot? Nah, this is all about shooting crap and saving the day! Oh alright if you want to know this is the jist of the story which of course was written down on the back of a well hard beer mat;

On a tiny island where everyone is oppressed and foreign, a team of mercenaries, led by the best named action hero ever, Barney Ross (Yes, Barney), get a job from Bruce Willis to have a look around and then get jolly upset that a rogue CIA agent-turned-ruthless drug lord and his puppet general’s army is causing upset to the local populous and decide to blow them up to teach them a lesson.

Naturally in order to pull off a caper of this magnitude, the team is made up of all sorts of big names stars, such as Jason “Even his nipples are harder than you are” Statham of Transporter fame, Jet Li who is small and doesn’t really do that much these days, so what the hell and Dolph Lundgren who err, I think was….well buggered if I know.

There are a great many others in the film as well, but given the fact that the movie poster just concentrated on who was in the film, the need to dwell on such a fact seems to fade away. Let’s just move on from the fact they got lots of people in it.

There’s also some nice ladies to look at, a plane, big bikes, lots of guns and fighting….err….things explode…oh what’s the use? This film was never going to be a intellectual masterpiece, we all knew that, but given the fact that I went to the cinema with such low expectations in the first place and the film more than failed to meet even them, that I’d have been better off watching Power Rangers, filling out a tax return or getting my stomach pumped and I would have got pretty much the same disappointment.

God knows how this film lasted as long as it did as it actually could have been over in about 10 minutes really with the amount of material Sly had written. Hang on, what do we need here? Some chases, fit birds that become tedious reasons to fight for, guns explosions, right, got it all, but sure, let’s throw in some crap about life while we’re at it too to pretend this is deeper than it really is as well.

The cast can’t even be bothered to act it seems, no on-screen chemistry at all, everything forced or at least chucked in at the last minute so that there was a semblance of order to the thing. What makes it all worse, is that they are all getting on a bit with the exception of Charisma Carpenter (she’s one of the fit ladies in case we needed to clarify) and Jason “Nipples of mass destruction” Statham that you wonder if this is what the retirement home for old action heroes will look like. Watching Sly Stallone running, now that alone was painful.

What’s worse, you barely remember anything else about the movie at all after you come out, it’s like your brain sensed danger to it’s mental health, and retreated to safety while your body would carry on functioning automatically till it was all over. Just remember to wipe the dribble from your mouth before leaving.

A lot of people said if it was made many years ago instead, it would be a far better proposition. That might be the case, but it’s today’s standards we judge by and this was just…..for once there may not be a word which is harsh enough. I demand a new word!

The same judgement would have been extended to many films from the 80’s like Predator when they shoot down an entire rainforest is destroyed in 5 minutes of pure gun firing porn. But there is a big difference; you would actually still enjoy Predator as a guilty pleasure, the expensables would be only watched again if you were just guilty.

And finally to some this whole thing up, where we began with the feeling of getting older, having a mid-life crisis. That pretty much seems to sum this entire film. It was trying to relive the past with big names, and lots of on screen action. There may have been the action but for the love of god, stop. Just stop it now before it gets any worse.