But beneath that shirt are the muscles he first revealed in "Rocky," and behind those eyes is the grit that got his breakthrough movie made back in 1976. At 64, Stallone is still a tough guy, and he aims to prove it alongside a cast of killer comrades in "The Expendables," which opened on Friday. In the film - another hat trick for the writer, director and star - Stallone leads a gang of impossibly muscular mercenaries who get caught up in a plot to overthrow the murderous dictator of a fictitious nation, though all is not as it seems. The story serves as a backdrop for countless explosions and fight scenes between Sly's cast of tough guys, which includes Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Terry Crews, former pro wrestler Steve Austin and Ultimate Fighting champ Randy Couture, plus cameos by Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The muscles, the fights, even the tattoos they sport in the film are real. "They are all bad-ass, for real. Like they know how to hurt you," Stallone said of his cast at a hotel suite just outside the recent Comic-Con fan fest, where he presented clips of the film. "And the audience hasn't seen guys who can run through a wall and snap you like a pretzel, for real." Stallone himself got pretzeled: He broke his neck and tore his shoulder while filming a fight scene with Austin. "I still have two more operations to go on my shoulder," he said.