trailer break: ‘The Expendables’

Take a break from work: watch a trailer…

Any trailer that starts with “They are the world’s greatest mercenaries…” had better turn into a parody at some point. I kept waiting for that to happen, and even as it appears to turn into a convention of washed-up action heroes — Dolph Lundgren? Dolph Lundgren is still working?! — it still looks like it’s taking itself seriously. That’s too bad.

Then again, it is an August movie, so we mustn’t expect much. I’d love it if this was as incisive a look at aging heroes as Stallone’s Rocky Balboa was (Stallone wrote and directed that one and this one). But I suspect I’ll have to settle for hoping this will at least be as diverting a bit of fluff as The Losers. Though that doesn’t look too likely, either. It might have had a chance if Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger and even Eric Roberts were major factors here, but since their names don’t appear in that rundown of the cast at the end, I suppose we must assume they have cameo appearances only.

The Expendables opens in the U.S. and Canada on August 13, and in the U.K. on August 20.