Film review: The Expendables (15) ****

After a bleak fallow period in the 1990s, Sylvester Stallone bounced back with the double whammy of Rocky Balboa and John Rambo.

Now sufficiently re-established, he's dusted off his best '80s' persona to deliver a kick-ass action extravaganza with a mouth-watering cast of aging tough guys that presents two vigorous fingers to his detractors.

It doesn't matter that the 64-year-old Italian Stallion is the oldest member of a potentially creaky team of hard men, or that his hair is disguised beneath a dodgy dye job. All that matters is that he is a plausible comic-strip hero surrounded by familiar faces all going pell-mell to give audiences a thrill-a-minute experience.

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That means explosions, gunfire, big weapons, bulging biceps and straining veins, explosions, blood 'n' gore, tattooed heavies, motorbikes, car chases and explosions.

Throw in cameos from veterans like Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Stallone really has pulled off a major retro movie coup.

Hired by the CIA to take out a rogue ex-agent running drugs out of a banana republic in South America, Barney Ross (Stallone) takes his team, known as the Expendables, into the fray once more.

They do it not for profit but because their original mission was compromised, leaving the puppet dictator's daughter in the hands of a band of cutthroats. Thus Stallone establishes that even soldiers of fortune will do the right thing, and not for love of money.

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Fans of brainless '80s' action flicks like Cobra (Stallone) and Commando (Schwarzenegger) will have fun spotting the various references crammed into this non-stop demolition derby of a movie.

Then there's the cast. Alongside Stallone is cockney roughneck, Jason Statham, psychotic Dolph Lundgren, compact Jet Li (who takes some serious punishment) and Mickey Rourke as a pipe-smoking, philosophising body artist whose studio provides the HQ where

the various Expendables meet up.

The plot is slim – merely an opportunity for a succession of grizzled old-timers in their 40s, 50s and 60s, to prove they're not over the hill. There is life in these mean old dogs. What's more, the very sensible decision by director/co-writer Stallone to embrace everything that gave him a career in OTT action epics in the '80s, here works exceptionally well.

And it's a short film, just 103 minutes. Which means plotting exposition comes a very definite second to stuntwork, speed, action and tongue-in-cheek macho posturing. The one-liners come thick and fast, always arriving just in time to buoy up yet another high-octane moment of bullets, bombs, banter or bravado.

A fantastically dumb growling mutt of a movie, The Expendables is a triumphant, noisy throwback to a dated concept. It's also a monumental guilty pleasure. More please.