Expend4bles: Awfully Good Unpacks This Embarrassing Franchise Killer

2023 may have been a great year for movies, but not even Oppenheimer could have made a bigger bomb this year than the long-delayed fourth adventure for Sylvester Stallone and Jason Statham’s action superteam: The Expendables 4 (aka EXPEND4BLES)!

It’s been nine long years since Expendables 3 let action fans down with its toned down PG-13 rating, but Stallone promised to make it worth the wait with his final R-rated turn at age 77 as Barney Ross, handing over the guns and grenades for most of the film to Statham’s Lee Christmas as he and the new team stop a villainous mercenary and the rogue CIA agent he’s working for (who may or may not be a visibly bored Andy Garcia) from kicking off World War III. Unfortunately, the cast lineup they have to work with exchanges actual action stars like Bruce and Arnold for the youth friendly likes of Megan Fox and 50 Cent, and with Stallone not even bothering to write the script this time, the corny action hero quips won’t be the only thing that has audiences groaning.

From its abysmal CGI that somehow looks worse than any Marvel movie this year, to its wasting of actual action movie stars like Iko Uwais as one of our villains and Tony Jaa as one of our new Expendables, it’s a new low for a franchise that has never had much of a high to start with. Without any of the charming aspects of the 80s action movies it hopes to emulate, this fourth entry should be a wake-up call to Stallone in his later years that it’s okay to let some things die already, while Statham goes back to less ridiculous movies where he drives cars in mid-air and fights prehistoric sharks. Rocky and Rambo, you will be missed… Barney Ross, not so much.