The Expendables 3 – Movie Review

The Expendables 3 – PG-13
Release Date: Fri 15 Aug 2014

The Expendables 3 is an empty, soulless waste of time, devoid of all the elements that made the other films in the franchise a stupid good time. Sure, we still have a host of 80’s action stars showing up for a scene here and there, but they disappear for long periods while we watch the new team. None of this pays off – we learn nothing about how the characters interact. The only actors that make their underwritten parts work are Mel Gibson and Antonio Banderas. Banderas is a hammy comic relief character that only has his charisma to work with (there’s nothing close to a good joke in the script) and Gibson is essentially the only bad guy with lines.

Action is filmed confusingly close and edited so strangely that it’s hard to tell what’s happening. Not that there are any stakes to care about. No one on the poster dies nor do we ever fear for their safety. Jet Li is the butt of a height joke and then gets one scene where he’s firing a gun from a helicopter. This is not how you use Jet Li in a movie. The newcomers are just as poorly written as the rest, but suffer even more for not being recognizable.

The fear of what would happen to the franchise if it went from the R to PG-13 rating isn’t really enough to blame everything else that’s wrong here. Sure, it’s a bloodless affair with toned down language, but the script forgot the whole point of getting a bunch of action movie “has-beens” together. It’s simply forgot how to be fun.

Cal and I saw it in the theater had a discussion in the car: