Because Sylvester Stallone did Mickey Rourke a solid by hiring him to appear in Get Carter, the Wrestler star is going to costar in The Expendables, an ensemble actioner that Stallone will be directing for Nu Image/Millenium.

The presence of producers Avi Lerner, Boaz Davidson, Danny Dumbort, etc. — the Bad News Jews of the 21st Century — suggests that on one level it’ll be another crap programmer. On another it might be another laugh-riot actioner in the vein of Stallone’s recent Rambo flick — a classic of its kind.

Rourke “will play an unscrupulous arms dealer who becomes the go-to guy for a group of mercenaries planning to topple a South American dictator,” the Variety story says.

So it’s going to be a new Dogs of War with Stallone, Rourke, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Randy Couture and Dolph Lundgren taking on a Hugo Chavez stand-in? If they try anything I’m going to join Sean Penn, Oliver Stone and other Chavez defenders in beating them back.

The Stallone-scripted film begins shooting in March in Brazil.

This looks to me like a totally disreputable israeli paycheck movie, and shame again on Stallone and his scumbag producer pallies for (apparently) intending to symbolically demonize Chavez.

John Irvin‘s Dogs of War, a 1980 actioner that costarred Chris Walken and Tom Berenger, was an excellent, tough-as-nails mercenary film, by the way.