Have you enjoyed the summer of endless movie violence? Or is it like this every summer? The Expendables is the next installment in the action film genre’s long list of pictures in which burly mercenaries dispense ruthless justice with explosives and fully automatic firearms while grappling with the inhumanity of their careers.

The film stars Sylvester Stallone (who also directs) and Jason Statham as Barney Ross and Lee Christmas, leaders of a band of for-hire killers including Jet Li, Rocky IV’s Dolph Lundgren and former NFL linebacker Terry Crews. The picture begins with the crew slaughtering a band of Somalian pirates, but the opening serves to introduce the characters’ vast array of weapons rather than their personalities and motives. The gang soon gathers at the tattoo parlor to reminisce and swap jive with their wayward friend Tool (Mickey Rourke).

Rourke’s cameo is the most substantial with the black-and-white dreadlocked actor snagging more screen time than Bruce Willis and California’s Last Action Governor, who also appear briefly. Willis plays a front man for the CIA, “Mr. Church,” who hires Barney Ross to assassinate the Chancellor of Vilena, a ruthless despot and amateur painter, General Garza (David Zayas). Garza is a Manuel Noriega-type, a military dictator bent on controlling his small Gulf island with help from American James Munroe (Eric Roberts, The Dark Knight) and none other than “Stone Cold” Steve Austin (who, if you can believe it, pulls the Stone Cold Stunner on Jet Li).

Upon their arrival in Vilena, Ross and Christmas are led by an English-speaking revolutionary named Sandra, the general’s daughter. Ross implores her to lead them to the palace, where they are cornered by a platoon of “handpicked monkeys” from Garza’s army. Statham appears from the woods and plunges countless black daggers into the necks of the Vilenian soldiers, while Rocky wastes ten more with a handgun and jujitsu.

The Expendables is reminiscent of early ’80s action films, like First Blood or The Terminator, and also shares qualities with late ’70s kung-fu movies, like Game of Death. But Stallone and others soon forget that their genre has evolved immensely since the ’80s. Stallone chooses to spend most of his $80 million on explosives and mayhem rather than visual effects artists, and the CGI blood stands as a testament that this was a mistake.

Stallone isn’t a terrible director by any stretch. His cinematographer Jeffrey Kimball (Top Gun) films the whole ordeal pretty nicely, and Stallone at least organizes the chaos involved in a high-budget movie with high-budget actors filmed outside the U.S. Many directors could barely pull this off, let alone star in the film also.

The real flaw of this film, though, is that its cast and crew is made up entirely of either washed-up has-beens or inept amateurs. Screenwriter David Callaham has penned little else to his name but that awful Doom movie, and Expendables’ script is tired and lackluster. Though Statham and Li attempt to bring humor to the exchange, the script is a barely serviceable, messy heap of old words. An older crowd will appreciate the film for its old-school action, but more than likely, this picture will drop off the map faster than each of the film’s principal actors.