General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Expend4bles

Expend4bles (also known as The Expendables 4) is a 2023 American action film directed by Scott Waugh and the fourth installment of The Expendables franchise, released theatrically by Lionsgate on September 22, 2023. It reunites Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, and Sylvester Stallone as a team of elite mercenaries, joined for the first time by Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, Megan Fox, Tony Jaa, Iko Uwais, Jacob Scipio, Levy Tran, and Andy Garcia.¹ Released nine years after The Expendables 3 (2014), the film opened to the franchise's worst box office and some of its worst reviews.²

Key fact	Detail
Release	September 22, 2023 (wide, Lionsgate); R rating; 103 minutes³^•⁴
Director / writers	Scott Waugh; screenplay by Kurt Wimmer, Tad Daggerhart, and Max Adams; story also by Spenser Cohen¹
Cast	Returning: Statham, Stallone, Lundgren, Couture; new: 50 Cent, Megan Fox, Tony Jaa, Iko Uwais, Jacob Scipio, Levy Tran, Andy Garcia¹
Box office	$8.3 million opening weekend, the franchise's worst; $16.7 million domestic and $51.1 million worldwide against a $100 million production budget²^•⁵
Critical reception	14% on Rotten Tomatoes (124 reviews); Metascore 30 on Metacritic, categorized as generally unfavorable³^•⁶
Awards	Razzie Awards: 2 wins and 7 nominations⁶

Spoilers

Plot and characters

The story sends the mercenary team to Libya, where the ruthless arms dealer Rahmat (Iko Uwais) is securing detonators for a nuclear weapon, on behalf of a shadowy figure codenamed Ocelot whom Barney Ross (Stallone) is determined to unmask. CIA handler Marsh (Andy Garcia) tasks the team with stopping him.⁴ A failed early mission leads to Christmas being banished from the team by the CIA handler, and the film is structured in part as a solo vehicle for Statham's character.⁹

Much of the action takes place on a freighter carrying a nuclear warhead, including a motorcycle chase across the ship's decks. Megan Fox plays mercenary leader Gina, Christmas's on-and-off partner; Tony Jaa plays Decha, a retired operative, and Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson plays new team member Easy Day, an ex-Marine. Jacob Scipio plays Galan, described in reviews as a junior version of Antonio Banderas's character from The Expendables 3, and Levy Tran plays Lash.⁴^•⁹

The film returns the series to an R rating after the PG-13-rated third installment, with the Motion Picture Association rating it "for strong/bloody violence throughout, language and sexual material."⁴

Franchise context

The Expendables series began in 2010 with Sylvester Stallone starring as leader Barney Ross, built around assembling veteran action stars in one ensemble. Sequels followed in 2012 and 2014.¹² Expend4bles arrived after a nine-year gap, and reviews noted the diminished novelty of the premise: the film drops the series' original hook of gathering past action icons, and the Washington Post reported it was reportedly the last Expendables film to feature Stallone.⁹^•¹² The film was released on home video on October 13, 2023 by Lionsgate Home Entertainment, three weeks after its theatrical debut.⁵

Production and credits

The film was produced by Kevin King-Templeton, Les Weldon, Yariv Lerner, and Jason Statham, with Lionsgate and Millennium Media among the production and financing companies. The characters originated with David Callaham, creator of the franchise's characters. Filming locations included London, England, with production also in Bulgaria, Greece, and the United Kingdom.¹^•⁵

Director Scott Waugh, whose earlier credits include Act of Valor (2012), said he was asked to direct about four weeks before production began.⁷ In interviews he described wanting to elevate the action and fight sequences and to shift focus toward Statham's character, Lee Christmas.⁸

Reception

Critical response was strongly negative. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 14% Tomatometer from 124 reviews, with the critics consensus reading: "Solid work from Jason Statham and some halfway decent set pieces aren't enough to make up for Expend4bles' lackluster action and cheap-looking effects." Verified audience scores were higher, at 69% on the Popcornmeter from more than 500 verified ratings.³ Metacritic assigned a Metascore of 30 based on 33 critic reviews, categorized as "generally unfavorable," and the film received 2 wins and 7 nominations at the Razzie Awards.⁶

Reviewers singled out the visual effects for criticism. The Associated Press noted that "some of the most obvious green screens provide inadvertent comedy,"⁴ and The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw wrote that the film's "digital effects could have been shot on an iPhone."¹⁰ Reviews were not uniformly negative: the San Francisco Chronicle's Mick LaSalle scored it 75, calling it "a solid and consistently effective action movie," and The Washington Post's Mark Jenkins gave it 2.5 stars, calling it "unsurprising and not especially ambitious, but agile enough to vault over most of its flaws."¹⁰^•⁹

Box office

The film opened on September 22, 2023 in 3,518 North American theaters and grossed $8.3 million for the weekend, the lowest opening in the franchise's history, finishing second behind The Nun II ($8.4 million in its third week).² The Numbers records a final domestic gross of $16,710,153 and international gross of $34,433,065, for a worldwide total of $51,143,218 against a production budget of $100,000,000, meaning worldwide box office reached about half the production budget.⁵ The Wrap's year-end accounting listed it among 2023's biggest busts.¹¹

The film performed better internationally than in North America, with China as a significant market: it opened there on September 15, 2023, a week before its US release.⁵ The previous franchise entry, The Expendables 3 (2014), had opened to $15.8 million and grossed $214 million worldwide.²

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Franchise and series entries as standalone works › Action, thriller, and crime series film entries › Entries released 2020s and later

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

Notice something wrong?