It's a film with more shootings, stabbings, punchings and aerobatic machine-gunnings than the rest of the year's movies put together but Sylvester Stallone arrived in the UK today with some words of reassurance: "I always believe the violence is justifiable," he said. "The one thing in my films ... I only kill people that need to be killed."

And then there are people who need to be killed in an even worse way than those who simply need to be killed – the men who do terrible things to women. "Let me put it this way," he told a press conference in London. "The ones that deserve it get it and they get it good and the ones that go after women really get it, you know what I mean? Really get it. People say: 'Oh, isn't that overkill?' and I say 'I'm not going to have a man having his way with a woman and wrecking her life and just shoot him with a bullet - it's too civilised. He's going to feel real pain'."

Stallone was at the UK premiere of The Expendables, a film he wrote, directed and stars in, alongside a who's who of action movie stars including Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Randy Couture and Steve Austin.

He admitted there was a lot of testosterone, aggression and competitiveness on set. Sitting alongside Lundgren and Statham he said: "Men are just naturally competitive and they want to keep upping the ante."

The phrase old school was used a lot today and Statham said it had been fun to make a movie of "real men doing real action", adding: "The action directors of today tend to rely on the movie as a visual and it becomes very boring because it's a lot of CG [computer graphics] and you don't know much about it."

There are two women in the film. Charisma Carpenter plays one who is physically abused by her partner and Giselle Itié plays another in need of rescue by Stallone's squad of expendable mercenaries. "I didn't want something that was a little too complex, a little too controversial, a little too politically correct, I wanted old school."

Stallone, the star of six Rockys and four Rambos, said he hoped The Expendables would be back and that he had little appetite for serious drama. "I've done my mind movies and I don't think people are very interested in seeing me do that any more. I think I'm past my prime in doing dramatic films, it would feel almost like a pathetic cry out to be recognised as a serious dramaturge."

The Expendables, which has had prerelease audiences cheering every name on the credits, opens in the UK this week and Stallone has undoubtedly pulled off a coup in getting cameo performances from Willis and Schwarzenegger. He did try others: "I called Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal and they just had different ideas on their … career, so … I did the best I could, you know."