Just about every superannuated action hero in Hollywood — Sylvester Stallone and Dolph Lundgren and a couple of uncredited cameos among others — takes a bow in this lumbering, aptly titled hulk of a movie. Unfortunately, Stallone directs as well.
His Barney Ross is head of a long-in-the-tooth mercenary group with a penchant for big knives, nasty tattoos, and bad dialogue. Some guy hires them to knock over the dictator of a Caribbean Island fronted by a renegade spook named James Munroe (Eric Roberts). That name is the only clever thing in the movie.
I don't want to give away any of the surprises, but — well, there are no surprises. The story is a pile of clichés, yet somehow it also makes no sense. I can overlook that, but not the blurred, Cuisinarted, jiggily shot action sequences, which are even more incoherent than those in Transformers 2. "You and me, we're the same," says Munroe in the end. "We're dead inside." Outside, too.
