The Expendables 2010

Amy Nicholson, I.E. Weekly: Stallone's boasted that he's made the drunk uncle of all dumb action movies and in several ways he has Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: The shootouts are epic, but the stuff leading up to them is lame. Read more

Glenn Kenny, MSN Movies: ... what winds up in the picture's largely lazy grasp is largely evidence of the influence of, well, any number of cheap and often straight-to-video testosterone fests. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: As a whole, the movie, whose title dimly evokes "They Were Expendable," a 1945 John Ford combat picture starring John Wayne and Robert Montgomery, might more aptly be described as Bad Kurosawa, Bad Peckinpah or Bad Leone. Read more

Jake Coyle, Associated Press: It's willfully out of date, like an aging hair band that can't pack away the spandex. Read more

Keith Uhlich, Time Out: The thought behind this body-splattering nostalgia trip is unformed and stagnant. Read more

John Hartl, Seattle Times: Unfortunately, there's a limit to the effectiveness of this kind of influence. Read more

Nathan Rabin, AV Club: Delivers pretty much exactly what its audience wants and expects: big, dumb, campy fun so deliriously, comically macho, it's remarkable that no one in the cast died of testosterone poisoning. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: Sure, it's fun, after a fashion, to see them all in the same place, kicking and creaking. But that's about all it is. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Expendables is the closest thing to movie Viagra yet invented. It's reprehensible. It's stoopid violent. It's a lot of unholy fun. Read more

Joshua Katzman, Chicago Reader: Borrows liberally from such male-bonding classics as Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen and Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, but offers not a whiff of the tragic fatalism and astute critique of machismo that inform those superior dramas. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Is it fun? Sort of. But it shoulda coulda been a ton of fun. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: The rest of the mayhem is simply ultraviolent, nonstop, and numbing. Better jokes might have helped. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: Sylvester Stallone's gun-emptying, blade-tossing, clandestine action flick "The Expendables" is great fun. Sure, this declaration comes with caveats, but do you really need to hear them? Read more

Adam Graham, Detroit News: I's a bit like a trip to the gym on a flat tire. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: As for Stallone, he grimaces purposefully in his El Greco beard, and he keeps the body count coming so that it sates you like a junk-food craving fulfilled. Read more

Laremy Legel, Film.com: The world has changed since Rambo and Arnold held sway, which isn't the film's fault. But it's going to be held accountable anyway. Read more

Sheri Linden, Hollywood Reporter: The body count is high and the personalities click in this old-school testosterone fest. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: Friends may not let friends die alone, but bogus philosophizing is apparently business as usual. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: The movie had been billed as a throwback to the action flicks of the 1980s, but that pitch turns out to be false advertising. Read more

Anthony Lane, New Yorker: The Expendables is savage yet inert, and breathtakingly sleazy in its lack of imagination. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: If you accept The Expendables for what it is -- Stallone having some simple, stupid fun -- you may be surprised to find yourself joining him. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: While Stallone's film won't win any Oscars, it gives off a dopey genre high that's hard not to catch. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: The brain-dead male equivalent of Sex and the City 2. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Stallone! Willis! Schwarzenegger! They're lovin' it, so I guess we have to, too. Read more

Richard Roeper, Richard Roeper.com: Also the Predictables, the Forgettables and they kinda look like the Anabolic Steroidables... Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: It's not the age of the actors that makes The Expendables expendable. It's the stale storytelling. Read more

Michael Joshua Rowin, Salon.com: Rather than reviving the actors' 80s heyday, The Expendables only demonstrates how much action films have changed in recent years. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: There's no one to blame but Stallone for action sequences that degenerate into incoherence, to the point where it's impossible to know who's truck is exploding and who's shooting at whom. Read more

Stephen Cole, Globe and Mail: The Expendables isn't as much fun as it should be. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: It yawningly snaps into place as yet another series of explosions that are dressed up with no place to blow. Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: What you will find is both familiar in its contours and unique in its casting. Read more

David Jenkins, Time Out: If you like watching men with no necks thumping each other, this could be your Citizen Kane. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: This is truly a movie that nobody needs -- gratuitously savage, implausible and sometimes incoherent. Read more

Peter Debruge, Variety: Take the cast away, and there's not much more here than the straight-to-DVD schlock that has kept conspicuously absent rivals Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme busy of late. Read more

Nick Pinkerton, Village Voice: This is action as timeless as the reptilian brain. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: Bullets, knives and bare hands fly in an incomprehensible vortex as arms and heads and body parts get thrown into the melee. Read more