Expend4bles has no more wishes to fulfill

polygon.com:

The Expendables movies were always a list of names before they were anything else. Stallone. Statham. Li. Snipes. Schwarzenegger. Willis. The pileup of those names is why anyone goes to see these movies. 2010’s The Expendables, and all its sequels, were aggressively marketed as assemblages of once-great titans of action cinema, a movie where fans of the VHS era could finally see their heroes sharing a screen together. It didn’t particularly matter what kind of movie they appeared in together, as long as it promised some action.

But it certainly helped that The Expendables was specifically an unabashed throwback to ’80s action movies, with director Sylvester Stallone delivering a testosterone-fueled joyride full of guns and elder muscles. In 2010, it felt like it was going to be one last ride from a bunch of guys who knew how to sneer and fire a machine gun, and who mostly saw women as a distraction from their hobby of wearing berets.

The fourth movie in the franchise, this week’s Expend4bles, doesn’t traffic in this nostalgia. Three movies and 13 years later, there isn’t much more wish fulfillment for Expendables movies to offer. Its biggest casting coups, like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Wesley Snipes, aren’t in attendance this time out, and their poor implementation in prior installments means they wouldn’t have been a draw anyway. The Expendables movies had one trick, and that trick has been played out. Director Scott Waughhas to resort to something else with Expend4bles: finally trying to turn one of these projects into a good action movie.

If satisfying action was Waugh’s only real goal, then kudos to him for clearing that bar handily. Expend4bles is easily the best pure action movie in the franchise, thanks to the