7. Killing Off Billy "The Kid"
...and that direction is the killing off of Liam Hemsworth's character Billy "The Kid" at the end of the first act, at the hands of Jean-Claude Van Damme's Jean Vilain. While Billy is dispatched in a pretty awesome way - by having Van Damme karate kick a knife through his chest - it feels like a missed opportunity to give the film a real propulsive, ahem, kick and make of Van Damme a strong, fierce foe. Killing off a character who has just barely been introduced does little for us as an audience; why not kill off Li or Rourke's characters instead, given their relative absence in the film? Plus the thought that these men - no doubt experienced but accelerated in age - can outlast a man who is shown just moments earlier to be in his physical prime, when he climbs a hill in record time, is indeed quite laughable. Of course one can argue that Billy was simply too green to go the distance, but we don't know enough of him to even really judge that.