Warning: Major spoilers for The Expendables 4 below!
Summary
- In The Expendables 4, Barney Ross fakes his own death as part of a plan to trap the real enemy, Ocelot, and help the Expendables defeat him.
- The decision to fake Barney's death is not arbitrary; it is a strategic move to draw out Ocelot, reveal his true identity, and eliminate him for good.
- While Barney's faked death may seem implausible, the movie leaves certain details unexplained, such as why Barney had to keep his plan a secret from Lee and the rest of the team. Nonetheless, his method ultimately succeeds.
Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) is back in action in The Expendables 4, with the movie sending him on a much more covert mission than usual. From the beginning of The Expendables franchise, Barney Ross has led the ragtag mercenary team on missions across the globe, but The Expendables 4 takes a dark turn when Barney is killed on their latest mission. Barney's second-in-command, Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), is blamed for Barney's demise, with the rest of the team seeking revenge on Barney's killer, arms dealer Suarto Rahmat (Iko Uwais) while Lee secretly follows them into battle.
In the final act of The Expendables 4, it is revealed that Barney was alive all along, having faked his death as part of a larger plan to entrap the Expendables's real enemy: the mysterious arms trafficker known as Ocelot. While it is as much a relief to see Barney Ross alive and well as it is for The Expendables 4 to be R-rated, the details of the movie's big twist raise a number of questions.
How Barney Ross Faked His Death In The Expendables 4
When the Expendables embark on their mission to retrieve the stolen nuclear warheads from Suarto's team, Barney provides air from the team's cargo plane. Unfortunately, the plane is shot down by Suarto himself, and despite Lee's efforts to save Barney, the plane crashes with Barney seemingly killed in the wreck. After Barney's surprising return to help Lee in the final battle aboard Suarto's ship, he reveals how he faked his demise.
Barney and Lee make some enemies of fellow mercenaries in The Expendables 4's opening bar fight to retrieve Barney's ring that he lost in a thumb wrestling match. Lee develops some particularly bad blood with a mercenary he dubs Jumbo Shrimp (Mike Möller). This does not go unnoticed by Barney, who seizes Jumbo Shrimp and secretly brings him aboard the Expendables's plane during the mission. After placing his ring on Jumbo Shrimp's finger, Barney parachutes out of the plane before it crashes, leaving Jumbo Shrimp to be mistaken as his corpse.
Why Barney's Death Was Faked In Expendables 4
While Barney's decision to fake his death might seem arbitrary, it's actually a ploy to help the Expendables defeat Suarto's employer, Ocelot. The team's CIA liaison, Marsh (Andy Garcia), is revealed as Ocelot in the movie's final act, and he has a history with Barney that includes a failed mission to apprehend Ocelot 25 years earlier. Knowing that Ocelot is the Expendables's target, Barney fakes his death in order to draw Ocelot out into the open, get him to unveil his real identity, and enable Barney to eliminate his target for good.
Outside The Expendables 4's plot, Barney's fake-out death also plays into the franchise's ing of the torch from Stallone to Statham as the Expendables' leader. Stallone has stated that The Expendables 4 will be his last portrayal of Barney Ross, and with Statham's Lee Christmas as his closest ally, he is Barney's most natural successor. Having Barney in a more secondary role in The Expendables 4 as a result of his faked death makes it easier for the movie to place the focus on Lee as the point man of The Expendables 4's cast and future leader of the team.
Expendables 4 Made Barney's Death Difficult To Believe
Despite Barney's chess-like strategy to lure out Ocelot, there are a few issues that make his faked death feel implausible. To begin with, Barney would have had to keep Jumbo Shrimp's presence on the plane hidden from the rest of the team until they had all been off-loaded. Moreover, after parachuting from the plane, Barney would also have had to get out of the line of sight of both the Expendables and Suarto and Ocelot's team very quickly, which seems like a tough trick to pull off even for the leader of the Expendables.
Additionally, The Expendables 4 never clarifies why Barney had to keep his plan a secret from Lee and the rest of the team. Barney might have felt that his plan had the best chance of succeeding if only he was aware of what he was doing. He might have also felt that, with the Expendables believing him dead, he would minimize the risk of his teammates being kidnapped by Ocelot's team and tortured for information on Barney's whereabouts. In any case, Barney's method to bring Ocelot down in The Expendables 4 ultimately works, but it feels like an excessively complicated method of attack from the typically straightforward Barney Ross.
