Expend4bles (2023)
Directed by Scott Waugh
Armed with every weapon they can get their hands on and the skills to use them, The Expendables are the world’s last line of defense and the team that gets called when all other options are off the table. But new team members with new styles and tactics are going to give “new blood” a whole new meaning.
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What critics compared Expend4bles to
It's directed by Scott Waugh (2014's "Need for Speed") and features some truly unmemorable CGI work to match its clunky fight scenes and hapless action choreography.
That seems to have been entirely lost on the filmmakers here, including director Scott Waugh who, similar to his awful take on the video game series Need for Speed, quadruples down on the obnoxiously macho energy to a point where it no longer even seems to be aware that it's a homage of past action movie eras.
Considering Scott Waugh’s experience in the action department from his stunt background to directing the likes of Act of Valor and Need for Speed, I’m surprised the set piece here feels dull and lacklustre.
Scott Waugh, a former stuntman and stunt coordinator who directed 2014’s “Need for Speed,” helms this latest iteration, which concerns a crew of baddies who take on various secret missions like every other juiced-up action series.
Simon West begat Patrick Hughes who here begets Scott Waugh, a former stuntman who made a name for himself with the Red State-baiting Act of Valor and later landed in movie jail with bomb Need for Speed, a not entirely terrible film whose various sequences of vehicular mayhem were enhanced by Waugh’s refusal to use CGI, bringing a welcome sense of grittiness to a genre overly reliant on deepfake thrills.
Unfortunately, Ballerina runs the risk of Expendable–izing it from the jump with a deadening downmarket approach…