Director: Patrick Hughes
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Wesley Snipes, Dolph Lundgren, Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford
Country: United States
Rating: PG-13
Run Time: 126 minutes
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| The boys are back for a PG-13 adventure. |
The Expendables 3 follows the tradition of the first two films by opening up with an action scene unrelated to the plot of the film. This time, the Expendables have tracked down one of their oldest members, Doctor Death (Wesley Snipes), held prisoner in a moving train. After rescuing him in a horribly rendered CGI helicopter, the Expendables take Death on a new mission with them to stop a weapons dealer. However, the weapons dealer turns out to be the once deceased Conrad Stonebanks (Mel Gibson), a former member of the Expendables turned bad. After one of the Expendables gets badly wounded on the mission, Barney (Stallone) tells the rest of the team that he doesn't want to see any more of them get hurt. Therefore, he drops the old Expendables team out of love and decides to hire a new team of lil' Expendables (Ronda Rousey, Kellan Lutz, Glen Powell, Victor Ortiz) in order to get some youthful experience on the team. Unfortunately for Barney, the lil' Expendables get captured by Stonebanks. That means that all of the old Expendables and some old and new friends (Arnold, Jet Li, Harrison Ford, Antonio Banderas) have to go after Stonebanks and rescue the lil' Expendables.
The first Expendables film had an actual plot and a decent amount of action. Stallone was clearly trying to make a character and plot driven action film but seemed to get distracted by the fact that his film could also be a who's who of the action genre. By the time Stallone reacher The Expendables 2, director Simon West threw all plot out of the window and went straight for the action. It added more action icons (Van Damme, Scott Adkins, and Chuck Norris) and amped up the action even more than the first film. The film was far more self aware than the previous entry as well. But than The Expendables 3 comes out and it makes me question if I ever liked the first two Expendables films at all...or even the action genre!
The Expendables 3 goes back to the concept of the first film by attempting a plot with less action than Expendables 2. Unfortunately, the plot found here is so predictable, tired, and weak, that nothing holds up. Barney Ross decides that because just one of his men get shots that the whole Expendables team has to be rebooted. Look at yourself Barney! You are older than any other member on your team! Who says you get to stay around but 47 year old Jason Statham can't?! This attempt at trying to make Stallone question his old team in order to create a new team is a total joke. Any moron can predict that Stallone's new team is going to be captured and that the old team is going to come back to help. I groaned in my seat when Stallone starts to take off in his plane to take on Stonebanks on his own and the old Expendables appear in front of his plane to help.
Stallone and friends have sold out to the 21st century by dumbing their film down to a PG-13. Stallone claimed that he owed it to the new generation to make a PG-13 film accessible to the younger audience. Therefore, Stallone and friends went back on everything they believed in and embraced for nearly 30 years and crapped all over it by removing all blood whatsoever. I have two huge qualms with the decision to make Expendables 3 PG-13.
1) Younger kids don't care about any of these actors. No younger kid is going to know who Robert Davi, Dolph Lundgren, or Wesley Snipes is unless they had cool parents that showed them their movies when they were 5 years old. Kids nowadays like people like Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, and Liam Neeson. Those are the action icons for the young crowd of PG-13 movie goers. People who grew up watching these actors since the 80's or 90's have followed them because they have almost always stuck to the R rated genre and delivered the same thing time and again. Younger kids don't care.
2) This is a group of actors who have devoted their careers to hard R action movies for nearly 30 years. The first two Expendables aren't good films but at least they knew what kind of action scenes people wanted to see. Heads explode, limbs are chopped off, bodies are shot up, and trucks explode into smithereens. But this film goes back on everything these actors have done so well for so long. The action is dumbed down, there is too little of it, and nobody is taking anything in the film seriously. The idea of a film series featuring aged action icons seemed like a good idea back in 2010. But now that we have reached 2014, I don't want to see another PG-13 Expendables film again.
There are only four action scenes in this film and I cared for none of them. The biggest issue with the action in this film is that too much of the film is reliant upon digital effects. All of the blood, gun, car, and helicopter effects are clearly CG and all of it looks awful. I laughed out loud during a scene where Stallone and Kelsey Grammer drove a car past the worst looking green screen in the entire world. I groaned when Stallone blew up a CG helicopter behind him and walked away from all of its cartoony fakeness. And I cringed when Stallone hung from a helicopter over clouds of horrible CG smoke below him. I could care less for any of these action scenes. Stallone originally claimed that this film would "out Raid Gareth Evan's The Raid." What a joke. I have nothing to say to that.
The walk on cameos are laughably lazy. They didn't even try with this film. Harrison Ford proves to be the worst actor of them all surprisingly. He spouts out one liners with no effort and I couldn't help but laugh each time. He's so terrible! Jet Li also appears for maybe a total of two minutes. He operates a machine gun, says maybe four lines, and than hugs Arnold Schwarzenegger at the end of the film. And Robert Davi shows up for mere seconds! Seconds! These don't count as cameos to me at all. They are lazy walk ons that make me want to groan.
I did enjoy a few things about this film though. The first was the return of Tyler Bates' musical score. Bates composed a very memorable and spot on score for the first two Expendables films and it was nice to hear the themes and motifs return for a third time. As the film started, I immediately began humming the score before it started. I really enjoy the opening tune for each Expendables films and find them to be the only thing consistent with each flick.
Antonio Banderas (Desperado, The Mask of Zorro) and Wesley Snipes (Blade, Passenger 57) were the funnest actors to watch in the film. Snipes and Banderas haven't been in a big budget action film on the big screen in a long time (The Legend of Zorro and Blade: Trinity were their last big action films if I am correct). Therefore, it was a nice novelty to see these two action titans return to the big screen once again. Snipes and Banderas felt the most natural out of everyone in the film as well. Their dialog was still horrible but at least they brought energy and excitement to a film filled with dull actors.
I'm done talking about this film. Everyone looks like they had a lot of fun making this film but no one seemed to care about the quality of the dang thing. The action is weak and of the PG-13 kind, the actors don't try, the plot is a joke, and the digital effects rank with Olympus Has Fallen's awful CGI. What is supposed to be a love letter to action cinema is no more than an insult to its fans. I am swearing off action movies for a while after seeing this film because I am hurt by how bad it is. Whatever you do, don't see this movie. Director Patrick Hughes should be ashamed THIS is what he churned out.
Rating: 3/10 - The impressive cast is all that is good about this piece of trash. You saw it for the icons but walked away with 10 less dollars and an empty feeling inside.
Update: I rewatched the film as of Dec.14 and the movie is actually worse than I remember. In one scene, Stallone washes ashore after drifting in a river. When one of the henchmen picks up Stallone out of the water, the space around Stallone's body is digitally altered to look wet. Stallone never laid in actual water! They digitally placed water splashes around his body where he laid! This is how lazy an actor Stallone has become. The guy won't even lay in actual water! Therefore, the rating stands.
Franchise:
The Expendables (2010, dir. Sylvester Stallone)
The Expendables 2 (2012, dir. Simon West)
The Expendables 3 (2014, dir. Patrick Hughes)
The first Expendables film had an actual plot and a decent amount of action. Stallone was clearly trying to make a character and plot driven action film but seemed to get distracted by the fact that his film could also be a who's who of the action genre. By the time Stallone reacher The Expendables 2, director Simon West threw all plot out of the window and went straight for the action. It added more action icons (Van Damme, Scott Adkins, and Chuck Norris) and amped up the action even more than the first film. The film was far more self aware than the previous entry as well. But than The Expendables 3 comes out and it makes me question if I ever liked the first two Expendables films at all...or even the action genre!
The Expendables 3 goes back to the concept of the first film by attempting a plot with less action than Expendables 2. Unfortunately, the plot found here is so predictable, tired, and weak, that nothing holds up. Barney Ross decides that because just one of his men get shots that the whole Expendables team has to be rebooted. Look at yourself Barney! You are older than any other member on your team! Who says you get to stay around but 47 year old Jason Statham can't?! This attempt at trying to make Stallone question his old team in order to create a new team is a total joke. Any moron can predict that Stallone's new team is going to be captured and that the old team is going to come back to help. I groaned in my seat when Stallone starts to take off in his plane to take on Stonebanks on his own and the old Expendables appear in front of his plane to help.
 |
| I miss the days when Gibson was Mad Max. |
Stallone and friends have sold out to the 21st century by dumbing their film down to a PG-13. Stallone claimed that he owed it to the new generation to make a PG-13 film accessible to the younger audience. Therefore, Stallone and friends went back on everything they believed in and embraced for nearly 30 years and crapped all over it by removing all blood whatsoever. I have two huge qualms with the decision to make Expendables 3 PG-13.
1) Younger kids don't care about any of these actors. No younger kid is going to know who Robert Davi, Dolph Lundgren, or Wesley Snipes is unless they had cool parents that showed them their movies when they were 5 years old. Kids nowadays like people like Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, and Liam Neeson. Those are the action icons for the young crowd of PG-13 movie goers. People who grew up watching these actors since the 80's or 90's have followed them because they have almost always stuck to the R rated genre and delivered the same thing time and again. Younger kids don't care.
2) This is a group of actors who have devoted their careers to hard R action movies for nearly 30 years. The first two Expendables aren't good films but at least they knew what kind of action scenes people wanted to see. Heads explode, limbs are chopped off, bodies are shot up, and trucks explode into smithereens. But this film goes back on everything these actors have done so well for so long. The action is dumbed down, there is too little of it, and nobody is taking anything in the film seriously. The idea of a film series featuring aged action icons seemed like a good idea back in 2010. But now that we have reached 2014, I don't want to see another PG-13 Expendables film again.
 |
| Prepare yourself for some of the worst CG ever. |
There are only four action scenes in this film and I cared for none of them. The biggest issue with the action in this film is that too much of the film is reliant upon digital effects. All of the blood, gun, car, and helicopter effects are clearly CG and all of it looks awful. I laughed out loud during a scene where Stallone and Kelsey Grammer drove a car past the worst looking green screen in the entire world. I groaned when Stallone blew up a CG helicopter behind him and walked away from all of its cartoony fakeness. And I cringed when Stallone hung from a helicopter over clouds of horrible CG smoke below him. I could care less for any of these action scenes. Stallone originally claimed that this film would "out Raid Gareth Evan's The Raid." What a joke. I have nothing to say to that.
The walk on cameos are laughably lazy. They didn't even try with this film. Harrison Ford proves to be the worst actor of them all surprisingly. He spouts out one liners with no effort and I couldn't help but laugh each time. He's so terrible! Jet Li also appears for maybe a total of two minutes. He operates a machine gun, says maybe four lines, and than hugs Arnold Schwarzenegger at the end of the film. And Robert Davi shows up for mere seconds! Seconds! These don't count as cameos to me at all. They are lazy walk ons that make me want to groan.
I did enjoy a few things about this film though. The first was the return of Tyler Bates' musical score. Bates composed a very memorable and spot on score for the first two Expendables films and it was nice to hear the themes and motifs return for a third time. As the film started, I immediately began humming the score before it started. I really enjoy the opening tune for each Expendables films and find them to be the only thing consistent with each flick.
Antonio Banderas (Desperado, The Mask of Zorro) and Wesley Snipes (Blade, Passenger 57) were the funnest actors to watch in the film. Snipes and Banderas haven't been in a big budget action film on the big screen in a long time (The Legend of Zorro and Blade: Trinity were their last big action films if I am correct). Therefore, it was a nice novelty to see these two action titans return to the big screen once again. Snipes and Banderas felt the most natural out of everyone in the film as well. Their dialog was still horrible but at least they brought energy and excitement to a film filled with dull actors.
 |
| Do it Arnold! Spare us the pain of an Expendables 4! |
I'm done talking about this film. Everyone looks like they had a lot of fun making this film but no one seemed to care about the quality of the dang thing. The action is weak and of the PG-13 kind, the actors don't try, the plot is a joke, and the digital effects rank with Olympus Has Fallen's awful CGI. What is supposed to be a love letter to action cinema is no more than an insult to its fans. I am swearing off action movies for a while after seeing this film because I am hurt by how bad it is. Whatever you do, don't see this movie. Director Patrick Hughes should be ashamed THIS is what he churned out.
Rating: 3/10 - The impressive cast is all that is good about this piece of trash. You saw it for the icons but walked away with 10 less dollars and an empty feeling inside.
Update: I rewatched the film as of Dec.14 and the movie is actually worse than I remember. In one scene, Stallone washes ashore after drifting in a river. When one of the henchmen picks up Stallone out of the water, the space around Stallone's body is digitally altered to look wet. Stallone never laid in actual water! They digitally placed water splashes around his body where he laid! This is how lazy an actor Stallone has become. The guy won't even lay in actual water! Therefore, the rating stands.
Franchise:
The Expendables (2010, dir. Sylvester Stallone)
The Expendables 2 (2012, dir. Simon West)
The Expendables 3 (2014, dir. Patrick Hughes)
It has taken a very large cast of stars to come together in order to form an even bigger team of elite mercenaries for The Expendables 3. Love it!
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