The Expendables – Movie Pics

Sylvester Stallone disappeared off the scene for a few years but came back with a bang to write and direct Rocky Balboa and Rambo and now he returns with a good old fashioned action flick called The Expendables.

The cast list is impressive for The Expendables with Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenneger all appearing, indeed it features many eighties action icons.

Brittany Murphy who died of a heart attack in December 2009 is also in the cast list but unfortunately Stallone has removed all her scenes for this cut of the film.

Charisma Carpenter plays Lacy in the film, you may remember her from Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel.

There was talk that the film may be released with a PG-13 certificate and producer Avi Lerner has stated he would prefer the lower certificate but it's confirmed as an R.

I prefer my action films to have an R rating with the violence and language intact. I suspect even if it was released to cinemas with the watered down PG-13 release that Sylvester Stallone would also release a harder unrated cut for it's Blu Ray debut. They actually screen tested a PG-13 and R rated version to audiences and the R rating was the runaway success. Thank God as i'm personally sick of seeing potentially great action movies lumbered with watered down content because of the so called more "commercial" PG-13 certificate.

The plot is simple but looks entertaining, mercenaries led by Stallone's Barney "Schizo" Ross go to a small South American island to overthrow a dictator but things do not go as planned. Bruce Willis plays Mr Church the man who offers the job to Barney. There is lots of double crossing going on and this seems a throwback to the action movies of the eighties and it's a film i am looking forward to seeing.

Stallone said in a recent interview "If this does perform, I think it will open a little more liquidity in funding the sequel," he goes on "I have an idea ready to go. People think doing a sequel is easy, but it's not because you need the element of surprise. I'm going to try to do something that's quite radical."

That's Charisma Carpenter in the pic above, you can view more of her here.

View some movie stills from The Expendables below. Double click to close the image.