Meet The Expendables!

Sylvester Stallone’s upcoming tough-guy action movie throwback film, The Expendables, has been a holy grail of awesomeness for action flick fans everywhere. The cast includes some the genre’s most famous names, including Stallone, Jet Li, Jason Statham Mickey Rourke, Dolph Lundgren,  “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Randy Couture, Eric Roberts and Arnold Schwarzenegger (in a cameo appearance). There’s now even rumor that Bruce Willis will make an appearance in the film.

Up until now everybody’s been aware of which actors would be in The Expendables – but what roles are they going to be playing? Who are the good guys and who are bad guys? Who will be facing off against who? Well, now have a breakdown of who is who and what is what in the bullet-ridden world of The Expendables.

The info comes our way courtesy of The Playlist, which snagged a copy of The Expendables shooting script and spilled the goods to us, the curious public. Most of what you’re about to read is just character synopsis, but for some it could be considered SPOILERS, so be wary.

Rather than mooch off ALL the hard work done by The Playlist, I’ll give you the character synopses of The Expendables‘ headlining stars, Sly Stallone, Jason Statham and Jet Li, and then link you to the rest of the info. Here are the three major players:

Barney Ross (Sly Stallone): Stallone doesn’t write much about him, but his interactions with the other characters explain much without dialogue. Essentially, Ross is by far the oldest of the group, and as such is sort of a mentor to the others. he has individual scenes with each character, where they all end up revealing their insecurities to him through rambling, stop-start macho dialogue. Ross isn’t interested in playing armchair psychiatrist, but rather smoothing out the bumps so that the mission could go smoothly. There’s no origin or flashbacks for this or any other character, and you know Stallone “gets it”- everything you need to know is on the page.

Lee Christmas (Jason Statham): Second-in-command- takes it upon himself to bust every one’s balls, which carries a nice, compensatory weight when we learn he’s having terrible relationship problems with the his flaky lady love Lacy (Charisma Carpenter). He’s also lethal with knives, and carries the most sour disposition of the group – expect scowling.

Bao Thao (Jet Li): A private sort, the Chinese martial artist uses his feet as often as his guns. He is the most lonely of the Expendables, and clearly doesn’t seem to be friends with many of them. He takes quiet moments to speak about his displeasure with their jobs and how he wants a larger cut to sponsor his own charity.

Those are the top dawgs, but if you want to know more about who The Expendables are and what the film is all about, you’ll have to go here.

After a quick read of The Playlist’s review of the shooting script, I’m proud to report that The Expendables is looking like it’s going to deliver exactly the kind of movie you hope it would. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, seems to have plenty of tongue-n-cheek moments, as well as varied forms of ass-whupping incorporating everything from martial arts to knives to good ol’ fashioned bullets. Oh and plenty of explosions, as we’ve seen in the behind-the-scenes video clips. If this film ends up PG-13 (which is a possibility), don’t be surprised if you hear the loudest societal groan in known history.

The Expendables is still at the top of my list of “films to see in ‘10″. It will shoot its way into theaters everywhere on April 23, 2010.

Source: The Playlist