Movie: The Expendables 3
Director: Patrick Hughes
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Stathom, Antonio Banderas, Jet Li, Wesley Snipes, Mel Gibson, Arnold Schwarzenegger
“Why Kelsey Grammar, why?” thought this reviewer while watching The Expendables 3, yet another summer sequel, with all the guns, but no firepower. But that should have been the last of my worries, technically. While one could have sat through the first and second installment just for the nostalgia value of watching our by-gone heroes battle it out against new villains old-school style, a third movie is just pushing it.
So the movie kicks off with Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) and his band of expendables (Jason Stathom, Wesley Snipes, Dolph Lundgren and Randy Couture) trying to catch a notorious arms dealer on behalf of a government agent, played by Harrisson Ford, who looks great for a 72 year old, and also chips in for some of the later action scenes, even if they’re a tad low key.
While Barney and his gang of gung-ho geriatrics go about their business trying to nab this mysterious arms dealer, Barney realises that the dealer is no stranger. Conrad Stonebags (Mel Gibson), a co-founder of the Expendables, who deflected to do his own dirty work, who Barney assumed dead for a long, long time, is now out in the open, in arm’s reach. But the gang bungles up and they lose him.
Now Stonebags is out to wipe out the Expendables. And Barney in an altruistic attempt to save his team, disbands the group and hires an entirely new team - four millennials, all clued in to the latest weaponry and the world of digital warfare. From here on, follows a long hour of listless violence and unbearable action scenes that follow absolutely no rationale or logic.
One would assume that a movie that celebrates some of our favourite heroes would show enough respect to these actors and furnish a script that would let them go out in a blaze of glory, rather than fizzle out into embarrassing nothingness. How is it so difficult to make the action films of the’80s, that had so much raw talent and dialogues that could send a shiver up your spine or make you laugh your guts out, and action that was as thrilling as it was bold? If producers spent a little less money on blowing up random cars and buildings and extravagant CGI, and more on capable script-writers, this problem wouldn’t arise, we hope.
Introducing the young ones didn’t help either. It only made the older actors look even more helpless and pathetic. The little life this movie shows is brought in by the two new entries in the franchise; Mel Gibson, as the menacing baddie and Antonio Banderas, the friendly, chatterbox Spanish assassin who is desperate to join the Expendables band. The film doesn’t live up to expectations at any point of time.
The soundtrack is melodramatic, the dialogues are self-depriciating but without any natural charm or wit, the action is insipid. We hope we’re spared the torture a fourth time around.
Verdict: The Expendables 3 refuses to take chances and go full-blazes and chooses dull mediocrity instead. Avoid.