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2024 Year in Review: The Expendables Award for Acting Excellence

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It is once again time for the annual look at the best and the worst of films/TV etc. from the world of the cast of the Expendables. Yes, this might be a bit of a joke award, and a little too easy, but … whatever.

Best Movie with an Expendable: Hit Man. This was an excellent film starring Expendable 3 star Glen Powell. Powell has become a real star and he could dominate these Expendable Acting Awards moving forward if he continues to take these interesting roles.

Best Expendable Actor: Harrison Ford (Shrinking). It is the second year in a row for Harrison Ford winning this award for his work on the Apple TV + series, Shrinking. He is just perfect in that role, steals every scene he is in and absolutely rules. His comedic timing is so great and he has chemistry with every actor on the show. He has made the grumpy old man trope his own and his is brilliant on this show.

Worst Movie with an Expendable: Monster Summer. Starring Mel Gibson, this film was a weak 1980s type film that wanted to be like Monster Squad, Goonies, Hocus Pocus or Sandlot, but just lacked any of those films’ strengths or any of those films’ charms. Gibson was miscast in the role too.

Bruce Willis Quantity over Quality Award for Most Movies Made by an Expendable: Antonio Banderas. He had four films (five if you include the London release of Paddington in Peru). The four films were Cult Killer, The Clean-Up Crew, Babygirl and the short Mercedes-Benz: In Her Shoe. I expect to see Babygirl, but the others I missed.

Best Expendable Cameo: Wesley Snipes (Blade, Deadpool & Wolverine). One of the best cameos of the year came from Snipes, reprising his classic role of Blade for the new MCU film. Despite the rumors of a feud with Ryan Reynolds stemming from Blade 3, Snipes appeared in the love letter film to the MCU and was an absolute highlight.

The Beekeeper

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In 2023, Jason Statham starred in two of the top three worst movies on my Worst Movie list. He is starting off 2024 better than that.

Adam Clay (Jason Statham) is a beekeeper who has rented some space from Eloise Parker (Phylicia Rashad) for his hives. When Eloise gets scammed out of all her money, including 2 million dollars from a charity that she ran, she kills herself. This set off Clay, who turned out to be a retired member of a special governmental group called the Beekeepers, and he went on a killing spree of everyone involved in the scam.

This was absolutely a poor-man’s John Wick. There is even the scene where the cocky young guy is told by a father-figure that he has messed up and is going to be killed and that there is nothing they can do about it. This felt right out of John Wick’s first film. 

The cocky young guy behind the scam scheme is Josh Hutcherson and he does a decent job of being slimy as could be. The ‘father-figure’ was a former CIA director played by Jeremy Irons. Both of these two did a great job as their characters, even if there is not much to them. This is a good example of good actors elevating parts that might not be very deep.

However, Hutcherson’s character’s eventual identity is very cringeworthy and is a big part of the finale of this movie that was so out there that it brought the film down.

The first part of the film was actually pretty decent and had a lot of fun, cheesy action with Jason Statham just killing fools. The film does go over the edge several times in the third act, stretching credibility to a thin. thin string.

There are two FBI agents that the film follows for some reason. Emma Raver-Lampman played Agent Veronica Parker, the daughter of Phylicia Rashad’s character but you could hardly guess that considering how detached she was most of the film. That plot point should have been eliminated or expanded upon instead of what was done. 

And as I have hinted at, the finale is just so improbably that, even in this type of a film, it makes you roll your eyes. This was very much like those crazy action movies of the 1990s. If that is what you are looking for, The Beekeeper is enough fun to get by, even if there are better movies that feature revenge killing. There were some decent kills in the first part of the film that were satisfying. There was one that was shown in the trailer that I wish would have been kept for the film because it would have been epic if I did not know it was coming.

Some of the dialogue of this movie was silly, with so many bee-puns that you just have to shake your head. 

The Beekeeper is dumb fun and a Jason Statham fan would enjoy this a lot. The dumb stuff never threatened to overwhelm the film and there was enough fun parts to make this watchable.

3.1 stars

2023 Expendables Awards for Acting Excellence

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It is time once again for the Expendables Awards for Acting Excellence. The awards given out to members of the massive cast for their best and worst appearances. And this year we had a new Expendable movie so we’ll see how things go.

Best movie w/Expendable: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Harrison Ford is here and, while the movie is at best fine, it is one of the best of the group of films with these actors in it. 

Best Expendable Actor: Harrison Ford for Shrinking. The Apple TV show that saw Ford as a psychiatrist. His work was really great in this series.

Worst movie with Expendables: Expend4bles. Ironic that the worst of the films this year featuring this group of actors is Expend4bles, which is easily one of the worst movies of this entire year. Even in my review of the film, I said that it would be the worst movie of the year if it had not been for Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. This was truly a terrible movie. 

The Bruce Willis Quantity Over Quality Expendables Award for Most Movies Made: Jason Statham. This year, Statham made four movies and, they were all just terrible. Expend4bles and The Meg 2 are among those four and they have a chance to be in the top 5 worst films of the year.

Best Expendable Cameo: Antonio Banderas (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny). Banderas was one of the highlights of The Dial of Destiny and I really wish he had stayed around for more in the film. Banderas has actually won Expendable Awards every year for awhile.

Best Expendable with a Giant Shark: Jason Statham. This is an award that was given out the year of The Meg, and now it has returned for this time. 

Best Expendable in Blue Makeup (or CGI face): Kelsey Grammar (The Marvels). The cool cameo in The Marvels post credit scene of Beast from the X-Men FOX universe was mind blowing and hinted at some major mutant fun.