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Review of Expend4bles (Guillaume Roussel)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if you can accept the abandonment of Brian Tyler's theme and style for this franchise and are open to a harsher rock and hip-hop attitude.

Avoid it... if you expect that new direction to amount to any substantive new appeal, Guillaume Roussel's score predictable and inane at every turn.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Expend4bles: (Guillaume Roussel) There wasn't much high art in the franchise of The Expendables to begin with, but 2023's belated fourth entry, Expend4bles dispenses with whatever appeal the concept once had. The 2014 predecessor, The Expendables 3 had reduced its violence to achieve a PG-13 rating, which robbed the production of the gloriously stupid death depictions that drove the prior movies. Its stumble caused years of consternation over the fate of The Expendables 4, lead actor Sylvester Stallone declining to contribute to the story as he had before and many of the franchise's prior big-name action stars of the 1980's and 1990's opting out. But with Stallone returns Jason Statham, and their chasing and explosions take them to the popular tourist destination of Libya to prevent a dude with dark skin from stealing a nuclear weapon on behalf of a mysterious warlord who, of course, turns out to be closer to home than anyone originally suspects. Fake deaths, double-crossing, and escaping nuclear blasts are part of the yawn-inducing story of the eventually renamed Expend4bles, and nobody seemed to care upon the film's release. Performing terribly at the box office, the franchise appears dead despite the valiant return to "R" rating territory. Missing out on all the fun of this failure is composer Brian Tyler, who was reportedly asked to return for this movie after scoring the first three. His commitment to The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Fast X did not allow him a chance to continue his work here, and that ended up being to the benefit of new director Scott Waugh's strategy. He hired relatively obscure French composer Guillaume Roussel for Expend4bles instead and instructed him to ditch Tyler's established sound for the franchise. Roussel is one of many graduates of Hans Zimmer's Remote Control Productions, having most notably contributed to the absolutely wretched score for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides in 2011. Since branching off on his own, Roussel found himself mired in the muck of lesser television projects, though his big screen work in the action/thriller genre did include 2014's 3 Days to Kill and 2022's November. He has admitted finding more comfort with lighter orchestral music like that he wrote for Disney's 2020 version of Black Beauty. For Expend4bles, though, he is sunk by a director who asked for comparatively dull rock and hip-hop material as the new focus of the series.

Tyler's music in this franchise was meant to evoke memories of 1980's orchestral action while lacing it with a newer, percussively muscular resurgence of power. All of that tact is absent in Expend4bles, and Roussel admits that he was initially disappointed by that direction because of his affinity for what Tyler had accomplished. Whatever last vestiges of Jerry Goldsmith that Tyler had applied to Stallone and company, including a main theme highlighted by something of a four-note anthem at the start, is abandoned. Now, the 1980's characters are afforded a hard rock style while the new additions receive the hip-hop influence. It's a brash electric guitar and synthesizer-led score, with an anonymous orchestral presence of strings and brass relegated to secondary duties of action support and muted, dramatic stewing in a few moments early and late. A lack of distinctive role for brass is especially baffling; not even unison horns can provide any balls to this work. That duty is for the electronic elements alone, and expect to hear nothing new stylistically when compared to countless equivalent scores on big and small screens. Roussel does provide two fresh themes to Expend4bles, but neither competes favorably with the main Tyler identity. The new main theme is a repeating five-note rhythmic formation heard immediately in "The New Squad" that figures in a brief burst late in "Marsh Runs the Show" and meanders on electric guitar behind the pounding of "Bike, Explosions and Death." The performance of "The New Squad" is reprised in "Expend4bles Main Theme" but with slightly more (but still inadequate) orchestral presence. A secondary theme for the characters' story arc utilizes ascending dramatic phrasing around two-note pairs, eventually shifting to ascending trios. Barely reminiscent of Tyler's main four-note motif in purpose and structure, this idea is heard at the outset of "A Horrible Loss" on low strings and a vague, fake chorus. On the upside, it returns appropriately to guide the action in the middle of "Redemption." These placements cannot salvage the remainder of the totally anonymous recording for Expend4bles, every technique applied to this score already saturating the industry and giving the listener no reason to care. Wailing alarm-like noises are undeniably the worst of these stereotypes, and that sound effect factors here. On album, the score amounts to a paltry 26 minutes, which may be a blessing in disguise. In the quest to create something different for this franchise, Roussel provided what has become most predictable and inane. The situation must have been frustrating for the composer, because the joy of earning this mainstream assignment is countered by the knowledge that the production forced him to record the worst music of the franchise.  *

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 26:22

• 1. The New Squad (2:01) • 2. A Horrible Loss (2:27) • 3. Here We Go (1:50) • 4. Introducing Decha (2:12) • 5. Marsh Runs the Show (2:40) • 6. Trouble Ahead (2:14)

• 7. Bike, Explosions and Death (3:13) • 8. Battle on the Deck (2:12) • 9. The Final Duel (1:41) • 10. Finding Ocelot (1:12) • 11. Redemption (1:57) • 12. Expend4bles Main Theme (2:43)

NOTES & QUOTES:

There exists no official packaging for this album.

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