After nine years, Expend4bles only shows the franchise is way past its prime. With a 100 million-dollar budget, it almost offers the 100 million-dollar question: How, and why, did this even get made?

Before seeing this, I rewatched the trilogy to have a better understanding of what I was going into. Even though I have gained a better appreciation for them as I have gotten older, they still are nowhere perfect, but what truly made them work is its cast. Seeing that the cast for this one was not only smaller, but less significant, I was cautious, yet I still had a sense of optimism going in. It’s not like I want this franchise to fail. I grew up on action films and I have seen both the highs and the lows. With this being the fourth entry and after nine years, I truly had high hopes that they would get it right and pivot this franchise in the right direction.

I was wrong.

Going into this, I was well aware of its tremendous, and gratuitous, outstanding budget. It is quite large for what it is. With a smaller cast and the fact that so much time has passed since the last entry, I questioned the integrity behind the decision of the film. After seeing it, I believe it was only to convince the cast to show up. It’s rather unfair to compare their budget to something like Oppenheimer, which had a similar budget. Coming from my background in accounting and finance, giving this film this type of budget did worry me, because in no way would it return such a profit to continue more entries for the franchise. After seeing this, this only solidified my assumption.

There are only four returning cast members – Jason Statham, Sylvester Stallone, Dolph Lundgren, and Randy Couture – and the rest are new. While it’s not a bad cast, it is surprising when comparing it to the past entries. I heard it in passing for this film, but the saying is true, when I say that this serves more as a Jason Statham-vehicle with supporting actors that show up here and there. Even though I enjoyed a few bits, specifically the ones led by Statham and Tony Jaa, everything else falls flat. Between its four writers and inexperienced direction, this may have been the result of too many cooks in the kitchen.

At first, the film doesn’t appear to be that bad. I am a huge fan of The Raid movies, so seeing Iko Uwais lead the opening instead of the iconic intro for the Expendables characters, I may have had more faith in this than I should have. From there, it doesn’t get much better. The script focuses on new characters being introduced in a very unorthodox way. Megan Fox gets introduced by yelling random, cliche things that make no sense. 50 Cent lacked any emotion to make his character to stand out. Rising talent, Jacob Scipio does a nice impersonation of Antonio Banderas, who his character is the son of. These characters become even less significant when it is really Statham that has to carry the movie. Putting this on him seems to be unfair as it is really the script and camerawork that does it injustice. This all just leads back to appreciating the films that came before a lot more.

Statham is a tremendous actor and his work only shows that he deserves in better quality films. I grew up on the Transporters trilogy, which is how I became known of him. Even in lesser quality films like The Fate of the Furious, he continues to be the best part of nearly every film he is in. What really does this film the injustices is how much it relies on CGI and cross cutting between different camera angles. The CGI is even more questionable when you factor in the massive budget. It is not only painfully recognizable, but it takes you out of the reality of the action. There is even one sequence that literally pans out to a view from outer space as though Statham could clearly see a satellite, which is just questionably laughable.

The way the film is shot also never brings you in on the action and it never lets the viewer sink in with what just occurred. The sequences consistently cut back and forth between different shots, leading to messy action that never lives up to the intensity that it hopes for. My best guess is that the actual coverage that they wanted didn’t pan out liked they hoped for, so they relied on the cutting room floor to fix it, which asks the question again: Where did this budget go? I hate to hyper fixate on it, but at the end of the day, the quality of the film is going to lead to diminished returns, resulting in no more entries.

Overall, the latest entry in the Expendables franchise is a disappointing one. The franchise hasn’t always been perfect, but I can see the potential in hindsight and it becomes frustrating when it can’t be done right. Between its laughable CGI, messy plot, and lack of direction, I am afraid this film is much worse than expected.

VERDICT: Really Bad