The 114 minute extended director's cut of Sylvester Stallone's 2010 action extravaganza "The Expendables" is a more deep, well rounded and satisfying version of the film that was already a great deal of fun in its original 103 minute theatrical cut. I'm usually wary of so called "extended" or "unrated" cuts of modern movies as they usually just involve shoehorning back in deleted scenes that were cut out for a reason.

The director's cut of The Expendables isn't that at all. As Sly himself states in a great introduction to the new blu-ray of his film, he basically started from scratch and re-edited the movie from the ground up to what his original vision and intention of the film was from the outset. He says that he liked the theatrical cut but that he loves the director's cut. I completely agree with him!

One thing that really stuck out to me is that the theatrical cut was edited in such a way that the majority of the film seemed to be focused much more on Sly and Jason Statham's characters. That is completely understandable since they were really the box office draw (in addition to the Bruce Willis and Schwarzenegger cameos). One of the criticisms of the theatrical cut that a lot of people had was that the other members of the Expendables team weren't given as much room to breathe and seemed kind of short changed in terms of getting to know who they all were better.

This has been completely rectified in the extended director's cut as all of the other characters get nice additional moments that really brings a sense of how they work as a team better than the theatrical cut did at times. The director's cut seems to have a lot more heart and soul now than it did in the theatrical cut.Read more ›

Sometimes Director's Cuts don't make that much of a difference ............
But in this case, the Director's Cut takes EXPENDABLES to a much higher level !!

Now I can like EXPENDABLES much better and never watch the theatrical version again.

Improvements -------

1) More character development

2) better choice of backing music

3) different bad guys in opening ship scene

4) got rid of the choppy edited fight scenes and returned a more complete natural action to the fight scenes so that you can now actually follow what is going on.
Much longer and complete fight scenes

5) More interplay between characters .. more comradarie

It is almost like a totally different movie

Seeing this Director's Cut, I can't understand why they ever released the original Theatrical Version like it was.

By comparison the original version looks like what happens when they put a movie on TV and edit the heck out of it to avoid ratings problems.

Without question .......... EXPENDABLES Director's Cut is 100% better !

I was not a big fan of the original release as I found it kind of shallow and nothing more than boom and pow.

But this Director's Cut really makes it a better movie

Oh man was this a fun movie!

At one point I leaned over to one of my buddies and said, "Best. Movie. Ever." Really. Actually, it probably isn't the best movie ever. But it was a nice throwback to the good old days of 80's movies that I grew up watching with the cheesy Schwarzenegger one-liners and over the top violence where the good guy wins and the bad guy meets his maker in some ridiculous way.

There are some over the top visuals that make it worth seeing and hearing; the sound was pretty amazing. And by amazing, I mean loud. Explosions you can feel in your bowels and that's not just the beef and bean burrito from lunch talkin' either. Better than they could do in the Eighties.

They missed out on a rematch w/ Lundgren and Stallone. I kept waiting for Lundgren to say, "I will break you" to someone but it never happened. The Schwarzenegger cameo was cool, but he should have thrown someone out of a window or something. Not happening these days. Same w/ Willis; he really has no part in this and didn't seem too menacing to me which was also disappointing. However, the rest of the cast delivered cases of canned butt-whoopin' as if they were FedEx.

Here's a typical scene. Statham kicks the tar out of a bunch of knuckleheads: in front of his ex-girlfriend who is dating one of said knuckleheads who, predictably, smacks her around. Too bad for Knucklehead that her ex has more than a passing interest in her and happens to be in a bad mood when he learns of the abuse. Bam. Pow. Smack. Insert one-liner, get the girl back, ride off unharmed w/ hottie on the motorcycle. I think people actually cheered at the fight choreography. I mean, the whole movie is like this. It's brilliant.Read more ›

I wanted to like this movie, I really do. For me, like for most posters on this board, this movie provides a dose of 80's nostalgia and a chance to watch our favorite actions heroes strut their stuff one more time. Sly Stallone, despite his once iconic status, has not really been a heavy hitter for quite some time. So the prospect of seeing him stage a possible comeback is another incentive to see this movie.

The result, however, is quite disappointing. Despite a strong cast and not-quite-so-shabby performances, the movie never provided me with the adrenaline rush I was expecting from a movie of this type. That is due to both the lackluster storyline and the poorly-edited action sequences. There are some nice moments between Stallone and Jason Statham that recalls some of the best buddy movies, and the explosions are louder than ever. But for the most part,the action sequences are less satisfying than they could have been because Stallone chose to employ the quick cuts that are so popular in the action genre noawadays, but which only made the action scenes that much more confusing to figure out. A lot of times I would have to wait until the dust have settled after a big fight to figure out what has just happened and who is left standing at the end of it. Also, the under-use of Jet Li in this movie is just criminal. This movie really belongs to Stallone and Statham; and for many of Li's big scenes either Stallone and Statham would be called upon to save him at the end. The sole purpose of Li's participation only seems to be to provide the movie with its third big name star. But what is the point of using someone like Jet Li if you're not going to give him a chance to do what he does best?

So in conclusion, while this movie could have been a lot worse, it could also have been a lot better. Word is that a sequel is already in the works. Here's hoping that the 2nd movie is a lot more satisfying than the first one.