By Peter Covino

Entertainment Editor

You get what you pay for.

And if all you want for your $10.50 (regular adult admission at The Loop in Kissimmee)  movie ticket is lots of explosions, knife and gun fights, flying fists and a tired-looking Sylvester Stallone, well The Expendables is money well spent.

Stallone ( I am not sure if it is the facelifts or some other kind of enhancement but his eyebrows seem to be almost at his hairline) is the major cause for what is wrong this high-octane action film.  The Expendables  is surprising dull when things are not blowing up.

There are three major problems with the movie: Stallone cannot act. Stallone cannot direct. Stallone cannot write a screenplay. Perhaps, once upon a time, the veteran film star could do one, two or all three of these things, but he cannot do them all at the same time, and certainly not direct himself.

The Expendables has so much potential too, to be a fun, mindless time at the movies.

The plot, virtually non-existent, follows the exploits of a group of over-the-hill mercenary types, as they do battle with Somalian pirates, South American dictators and the like. They get in, shoot a couple of dozen people or more, get out and go back to the tattoo parlor where Mickey Rourke resides.

Speaking of Rourke, it would have been much better to see him (he is still in The Wrestler-mode here) team up in a reunion film with Eric Roberts. Roberts is one of the bad guys in The Expendables. The two men played so well off each other in The Pope of Greenwich Village in the 1980s. Here, they don't even share a scene.

The film is pretty much a waste of the rest of the colorful cast as well. Stallone apparently thought all he had to do was get Roberts, Rourke, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Jason Statham,  Steve Austin,  Randy Couture and the rest on the set and point a camera in their direction and yell action. And it really shouldn't have had to take much more effort than that.

But it looks like little effort was made in putting this film together. The dialogue is weak, the jokes are bad, and the acting is non-existent.

Even the presence of Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger (whose mere  presence excited  the advance screening audience) in what amount to cameo roles, do little to make The Expendables an enjoyable experience.

The Schwarzenegger scene had so much potential too, but Stallone let any chance of something memorable  escape as well. The two men in the film have an apparent long history together, not all of it good. They exchange a few barbs back and forth and after the governor of California exits, one of the characters asks Stallone (who plays the group leader Barney Ross), what was his problem.

The reply: He wants to be president of the United States.

But even that line doesn't come off as well as it should have.

Critic's rating: D

Rated R