Sylvester Stallone has a simple way to describe the actors he recruited for his new action film, The Expendables.
"Bad asses," Stallone, taking a break on the New Orleans set of the film, laughs.
In what arguably is the toughest cast of brutes put together in a Hollywood film, Stallone handpicked a who's who of tough guys, A-List action stars, elite athletes, mixed martial arts (MMA) champions and championship wrestlers to be his co-stars.
The all-star list is headed by this year's best actor Oscar nominee and former professional boxer Mickey Rourke, Chinese martial arts king Jet Li, British action star Jason Statham, Stallone's former Rocky nemesis Dolph Lungdren, gridiron linebacker Terry Crews, championship wrestler Steve "Stone Cold" Austin and MMA heavyweight champ Randy Couture.
For good measure, Stallone also coaxed Arnold Schwarzenegger out of his California governor's chair for a cameo.
There's a rumour Bruce Willis also has a role.
Stallone wrote, directed and stars in The Expendables, about a ragtag gang of mercenaries sent to South America to free an island nation captured by an evil general.
"These guys don't fit in this world," Stallone says.
"They are expendable."
Action film fans will have to be patient.
Stallone and his crew completed the film in late June and The Expendables is not scheduled for release until April next year.
If the stars of the movie sound intimidating, Stallone encourages the movie's audience to take a look at the not so well known actors he cast in The Expendables.
The film was partly shot in Brazil and Stallone trawled the country's MMA gyms for the toughest, meanest men he could find.
"We have some tough men in this film," Stallone says in his familiar deep, mumbling, monotone voice.
"We have extras in this movie who can conquer countries.
"I went to Brazil and got the baddest, toughest MMA fighters. They could snap us like spaghetti. That's just the extras."
With so many tough guys on set Stallone made sure tempers did not flare.
"The biggest alpha dog of course is Sly so he keeps everybody in check," Lungdren, the blond 196cm tall Swedish-born actor best known for playing Soviet Union boxing champ Ivan Drago in Rocky IV, said.
The Expendables is the most extravagant project of Stallone's 50-plus film career.
It was a long journey for the 62-year-old (Stallone turns 63 on July 6) to turn the script into a movie.
"We did about 100 drafts because it just kept evolving," Stallone says.
"It constantly changed."
At one point Stallone was pursuing less beefcake and had Oscar winners Forest Whitaker and Ben Kingsley in his sights to be co-stars.
"But after a while the parts changed and certain characters I didn't even think of like Mickey Rourke's and Terry Crews', they just started to develop," Stallone says.
"It was much more CIA, stealth and wordy but then as we pared it down we went for more physical people.
"It started out as a dark comedy, a satire.
"Then we made it a really hard 'R' rating. Then I went back.
"It was constantly being brutally changed. It wasn't literally until a week before shooting I said 'Let's just make this kind of movie"."
The result is a film Stallone says "has a poignancy but it isn't preachy. It is dark comedy".
The comedy comes from playing up on the images the public may have of the stars. For instance, Stallone says Statham is regarded as a bit of a playboy by the media.
In The Expendables Statham's character, Lee Christmas, has "problems with women".
He also encouraged the cast to adlib.
Stallone did not find it hard to sign his cast. The likes of Li and Statham, used to being the stars of their films, were keen to work with their idol.
To ensure they found their roles satisfying, Stallone took great care in developing characters he thought Rourke, Li, Statham and the other headliners would find interesting.
Each character has a back story.
"You try to write parts that interest them and appeal to their sense of competition," Stallone says.
"You just had to get their interest."
Beijing-born Li, a former Chinese wushu champion best known in the western world for his roles in Kiss of the Dragon and Romeo Must Die, did not need much convincing to play Vietnamese-American mercenary Bao in The Expendables.
Li first met Stallone in 1994 in Hong Kong.
"He said 'Hey, we should do a movie together'," Li recalls.
"So 15 years later it finally happened.
"Sly is the action hero of the world.
"I remember I saw him 20 years ago in the first Rambo. I liked Rocky III very much too. I grew up with that."
As tough as each character in The Expendables is, Stallone made sure each had a personal trait that made them vulnerable. He believes that is one of the keys to a successful action film.
"A good fighter is most comfortable in the ring," Stallone explains, drawing on his experience with professional boxers.
"Outside the ring they are floundering around.
"They cannot master their own life.
"What I try to do with these characters that look invulnerable, I give them feet of clay so the audience goes 'That's about me'.
"It is not about muscles.
"The whole thing about Rocky wasn't the boxing. It was about Adrian. It wasn't about him. It was about her and him finding love."
The Expendables, with its plot of a gang of mercenaries recruited to overthrow a dictator, may be criticised for not being original but Stallone says the film is the latest incarnation of the action genre.
He says it is a fresh take because the characters show flaws.
"Action heroes have gone through a metamorphosis," Stallone explains.
"After World War II there was a sense that you had to find the new kind of man, the John Wayne or Lee Marvin strong silent man somewhat brutalised by society.
"Then you had Dirty Harry which became more of an urban situation.
"Then my generation came along which was the action guys who were not necessarily affiliated with anything, maybe Vietnam, so they all had a complex. They were America's outcasts.
"Now you have the new action hero that is subjected to special effects.
"With The Expendables the pendulum has swung around.
"You are rediscovering the physical alpha male but also all the baggage that comes along in a politically correct world."
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