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A new series of “The Expendables” is at the Russian box office: Sylvester Stallone and his comrades for the fourth time do not spoil the grooves of the canonical action movie, and in its 13th year of life, the franchise finally has every chance to win the status of a classic.
The word “expendable” in English means consumables. This is exactly what John Rambo called himself in the 1985 film when he explained to a Vietnamese contact why he was chosen for a deadly operation: “I can be neglected. It’s like being invited to a party, you don’t come, and no one cares.” And a quarter of a century later, Sylvester Stallone, who played Rambo, chose this name for his obviously stunning project, which was supposed to collect not only all the signature moves of the classic action movie, but, what is especially valuable, the main stars of the genre, a kind of “league of extraordinary gentlemen of fortune,” and not only and not so much the active ones (led by Jason Statham), but also those who, in full accordance with the original name, went into circulation. However, for some: for the Russian viewer, raised on video, most of the “heroes of yesterday” who appeared in this armor-piercing skit continued to simply remain heroes. So it is not surprising that in our box office there could be no talk of any consumables, and “The Expendables” appeared before a reverently frozen public in 2010, majestic and menacing, like heroes on a cigarette box.
It seemed that with such a cast the film could not have been made at all, limiting itself to a group photo on an advertising poster, but the heart of a true connoisseur would sing in any case. It sang, but the further it went, the less and less confident it was. As the initial excitement subsided somewhat, many disappointing circumstances became apparent. And the jokes were mostly average, and the notorious action turned out to be not so much stylized as a category B product, but actually was one, and the plot, for all its deliberate optionality and convention, turned out to be sewn with some very defiantly snow-white threads. It was as if I had to internally convince myself all the time that what was happening on the screen was actually cool. But still, the “commandos of our youth” did not behave as a real dream team should, but rather in the traditions of the football team of regulars at the Kinotavr festival, which at that time could still be admired every summer at the Sochi stadium. This, of course, also had its own specific charm, but still there was a feeling that a true triumph, no matter how you look at it, did not happen. However, almost 300 million worldwide box office receipts indicated the opposite, so two years later The Expendables 2 was released, directed by Simon West (Con Air, the first Lara Croft, The Mechanic with the same Statham), supplemented by others Chuck Norris (good) and Jean-Claude Van Damme (bad) and collected more than 300 million worldwide. Although objectively the sequel turned out to be larger and noisier, it was still the same disappointing embodiment of missed opportunities. The third series looked much better in 2014, entrusted to the then feature debutant Patrick Hughes (later he would direct “The Hitman’s Bodyguard” and “The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard”): true daring finally breathed from the screen, the team of “expendables” was replenished with someone in excellent form of Wesley Snipes (he was supposed to appear in the first part, but due to problems with taxes could not leave the USA), Mel Gibson was very competently and at the same time amusingly responsible for the atrocities, and as a wedding groom not even a general, but a field marshal in several Harrison Ford himself appeared in the episodes. But against the background of “The Hobbit”, “Transformers” and “Guardians of the Galaxy” reigning supreme at the box office, few people noticed all these improvements, the threequel collected much less than the previous parts, and when two years later the next “Expendables” really didn’t come to the party, until No one really cared much about them.
However, a caveat should be made here – the formula invented by Stallone was enthusiastically adopted by the producers of truly third-rate films, which also have plenty of their own “spent unstoppables”. On the same day as the premiere of the third series, “Mercenaries” by Christopher Ray (the son of the legendary trash maker Fred Olen Ray) was released on the Internet – where a team of warriors consisting of Cynthia Rothrock, Zoe Bell, Kristanna Loken and Vivica Fox rescued the daughter of the American president from the manicured claws of Brigitte Nielsen. Two years later, the tireless Alexander Nevsky assembled a silver dream team for “Showdown in Manila” (by all accounts passing as the directorial debut of Mark Dacascos), where, for example, he found himself in the same rubber boat with the aforementioned Rothrock, Olivier Gruner and Don “Dragon” Wilson. Dmitry “Cosmos” Dyuzhev. In addition, there is – and there is no doubt about it – the legendary film “Outside the Game” (2016): contrary to the title, actor, director and producer Erken Yalgashev, who has been working in the USA since the mid-1990s, introduced almost nothing into his game all the iconic B actors you can remember (Assante, Bauer, Van Dien, Gruner, Dacascos and another three dozen names for all the letters of the alphabet). The lucky few who have had the chance to see this gem characterize it as a hard-to-get-it-in-your-head hybrid of hand-to-hand action and slasher film, claim that it is indescribable and intoxicating from the first to the last frame, and compare it not even with “The Expendables,” but with “It.” crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy world” (so, apparently, it is no coincidence that Yalgashev’s next production work was a documentary about Pauline Kael).
But if “Outside the Game” remains a purely esoteric rarity (it seems that to this day the only way to watch it is to order a Japanese DVD on the Japanese Amazon), then “The Expendables”, having endured the Moscow Art Theater pause, is returning as a planetary blockbuster . The director was Scott Waugh, whose action movie with Jackie Chan and John Cena, “As Cool as It Gets,” just turned out to be both a hit on Netflix and the Russian box office. For the first time in the history of the franchise, Terry Crews, Jet Li, Schwarzenegger and (for obvious sad reasons) Bruce Willis will not be in the film; they will be replaced as best they can by Fifty Saint, Andy Garcia and Megan Fox. But most importantly, the cast has been supplemented by two absolutely outstanding action heroes, whose participation allows us to hope that the anecdote once invented by Stallone with a beard, muscles and a bazooka at the ready will be filled with new meaning. Thai Tony Jha and Indonesian Iko Yuwais can hardly be called “new blood” (as the authors of the advertising slogan did) – the main hits of Jha (“Ong Bak”) and Yuwais (“Raid”) are 20 and 10 years old, respectively, both of them managed to achieve considerable heights in their homeland and feel quite comfortable in Hollywood (both of them, in particular, appeared in “Fast and Furious”). But they obviously managed to preserve the spirit of a true action film, the way Bruce Lee saw it in his time. And there is a very high probability that it is with their help that “The Expendables” at number 4 (despite the fact that in the East this number is considered one of the most unlucky) will eventually turn into a classic. If not in “Enter the Dragon” of the new millennium, then in “Them They Called Bonebreakers” – definitely.
In theaters from September 21
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