The Expendables (Cert 18, 99 mins, Lionsgate Home Entertainment UK Ltd). Starring Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, Steve Austin, Giselle Itie, David Zayas, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis HHH The film shoe-horns some of the biggest names of the action genre into one preposterous, all-guns-blazing romp, including a throwaway scene in a church with Schwarzenegger and Willis. Brawn triumphs over brains in Stallone’s film, which does everything you expect as loudly and brashly as possible, like razing almost an entire nation in the name of liberty (analogies with current conflicts are completely accidental). The writer-director and Statham enjoy the lion’s share of the fight sequences, the latter proving once again that he is a master at delivering limp dialogue in monotone. Meanwhile, Lundgren enjoys one of his meatiest roles in years. A three-disc limited edition Blu-ray in steelbook packaging, complete with the feature-length documentary Inferno: The Making Of The Expendables, is also available.

Knight & Day (Cert 12, 105 mins, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertain-ment). Starring Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Peter Sarsgaard, Marc Blucas, Jordi Molla HHH Fast-paced action comedy that has lots of crash, bang but almost no emotional wallop. The film gallops across the globe from Boston to Salzburg and finally to Seville for a spectacular finale during a bull run. Cruise limbers up for the physical demands of next summer’s Mission: Impossible Ghost with a series of bruising stunt sequences, and Diaz gets battered behind the wheel of a car in the centrepiece chase. Both actors seem to be bulletproof, emerging from the melees virtually unscathed.

Salt (Cert 12, 95 mins, Sony Pictures Home Entertain-ment). Starring Angelina Jolie, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Liev Schreiber, August Diehl, Daniel Olbrychski HHH Originally penned with Tom Cruise in mind and then hastily rewritten when Jolie signed up for the lead role, Salt is a competent high-octane adventure, interspersed with some well-choreographed action sequences including a highway car chase that sees her character evade capture by leaping from the roof of one speeding truck to the next. Jolie kicks serious butt and she copes with the physical demands of the lead role. In a nod perhaps to the script’s original incarnation, she even dons a latex facemask to pass muster as a male attache to break into the White House. The body count is high, but there’s never any sense that Salt will be injured in the line of duty, culminating in a final confrontation that neatly sets up a sequel, a la the Bourne saga.