Directed by: Patrick Hughes.
Written by: Sylvester Stallone and Creighton Rothenberger & Katrin Benedikt based on characters created by Dave Callaham.
Starring: Sylvester Stallone (Barney Ross), Jason Statham (Lee Christmas), Harrison Ford (Drummer), Arnold Schwarzenegger (Trench), Mel Gibson (Stonebanks), Wesley Snipes (Doc), Dolph Lundgren (Gunnar Jensen), Randy Couture (Toll Road), Terry Crews (Caesar), Kelsey Grammer (Bonaparte), Glen Powell (Thorn), Antonio Banderas (Galgo), Victor Ortiz (Mars), Ronda Rousey (Luna), Kellan Lutz (Smilee), Jet Li (Yin Yang).
You would think that for
a series that is based almost exclusively on 1980s action movie nostalgia that
the people behind The Expendables movies would think of hiring one of the
directors who made those films in the first place. I mean, Jon McTiernan out of
jail now – what else is he doing. Even better, why not hire one of the great
Hong Kong directors from that era – John Woo, Tsui Hark, hell Id even take
Ringo Lam. I say this because the worst thing about The Expendables 3 – and
there isn’t much good about it – is the action itself, and that’s just
inexcusable. Director Patrick Hughes – the third director in the series so far
– seems to want to be Michael Bay, and shoots every action sequence with a
camera that never stops shaking, and rapid fire editing. For the most part, I
had no idea what the hell was going on during the action sequences. At the very
least, a better director would have known that you don’t cast Jet Li in an
action movie and then waste him standing behind a machine gun for his entire
role.
The movie begins with
The Expendables breaking out one of their own – Doc (Wesley Snipes) – from a
maximum security prison in some backwoods, Eastern European country. He has
spent years in there (for tax evasion, Snipes quips) – and the boys need him to
pull off their latest job. But, of course, things go horribly wrong when the
bad guy they were expecting turns out to be someone else. In fact, its Barney (Sylvester
Stallone) old partner – Stonebanks (Mel Gibson). One of The Expendables is
shot, and Barney fears that they are too old to continue doing what they are
doing. So he fires his team, and hires a bunch of young new recruits to go
after Stonebanks himself. But, of course, he will eventually need his old team
back again – with another new addition (Antonio Banderas), who lost his team in
Benghazi (which is a reference thrown in for kicks apparently).
The Expendables movies
have never been very good – they are barely movies at all really, but an excuse
for a bunch of old action stars to keep working – who together have enough fans
to keep the films profitable. They are the brainchild of Stallone, but none of
them come close to being as good as the final installment of Rambo that
Stallone made a few years ago – the closest he will ever come to making his own
version of Unforgiven. The cast of these movies is so big – and continuously
growing – that other than Stallone no one gets much of a chance to distinguish
themselves. This film adds a few more faces – some work well, like Antonio
Bandera, who is great as a motor mouth crazy guy and Ronda Rousey, as one of
the young Expendables, who is the only woman I’ve seen in a film that I think
could hold her own with Gina Carano – others not really, Snipes who is given
nothing to do, and the rest of the younger Expendables, who are essentially
interchangeable. Best of all is Mel Gibson, who slips effortlessly into the
role of a crazy person, for obvious reasons. Too bad he’s such an asshole,
because Gibson could have one hell of a career playing bad guys now.
For the most part, The Expendables 3 doesn’t really work that well. It almost seems like the filmmakers are barely trying anymore. They’ve squeezed three of these movie into in the last five years, which is probably too much, too soon. Would I watch an Expendables 4? Yes, I would. What can I say. I’m a sucker.
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