Director: Patrick Hughes
Writers: Sylvester Stallone (screenplay), Creighton Rothenberger (screenplay)
Stars: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li
Plot: Barney augments his team with new blood for a personal battle: to take down Conrad Stonebanks, the Expendables co-founder and notorious arms trader who is hell bent on wiping out Barney and every single one of his associates.
Running time: 2 hours 6 minutes
Rotten Tomatoes Score: Critics 32% Audience 49%
Why I watched it: Dumb question, this kind of action movie is my wheelhouse and yes I saw the first two.
Thoughts: This looks to be the last one in this franchise and it’s funny cause I don’t think it ever found it’s feet, on paper this is a no brainer but too many egos and really a lack of good story has hurt them so far.
What I like: I love B-Movie action films, they’re feel good movies for me, I don’t need much just sit back and enjoy, don’t over think it, these kind of movies are the perfect enjoy them for what they are and I did for the first two. The first one didn’t really lick but I had fun with the second and now this one just gives us more and I mean more, two different teams of expendables more big names added and Mel Gibson as the bad guy and some of this work. This franchise has always been the more is more concept, heck they had Gibson and Ford to this and really were they needed. Gibson works as the main heavy and he plays it pretty straight, he doesn’t go way over the top he plays a evil heavy with an ax to grind.
I also liked Kelsey Grammer as a headhunter so to speak. Lots of action of course and I thought the story moved pretty well considering they do three movie here, the set up, the recruiting of a new team and then a rescue by the old team, there was a lot of ground to cover and I’ll give them some credit for packing a lot in story wise. I also liked Banderas, he makes me laugh, I love his over the top characters.
What I didn’t like: This movie has the same problems that the first one had, it’s just not that much fun, it’s way to serious and they should have embraced the B-movie qualities of this material. Also lets try to figure out why this wasn’t a R-Rated movie, it’s way too tame with this cast it should have been balls to the wall.
There’s one part of this movie that didn’t work for me at all and that was the new team, we didn’t need it and they added nothing, well the one thing they added was more bodies on the screen and man was that screen crowded. No one on the young new team brought anything to the table. If you were wondering why Ronda Rousey doesn’t have a film career look not further than Expendable 3, sh’s stiff and not a great presence. There’s too many characters here, I mean two full teams, bad guys and guest stars no wonder this movie was over 2 hours and come on this type of movie shouldn’t be more than 100 minutes.
The fight scenes were fine but nothing special, also the fight scenes don’t tell I good story here, we don’t worry about anyone, there’s no stakes here. Watching this film I really felt Stallone and company missed the point, take half this cast, make a tighter and more violent film and then you would have something.
Final thoughts: I didn’t mind the film but man it should have been more fun but I will say I didn’t mind watching it as it’s fun to see these many action stars together I just wished they were in a better film.
Movie Burner Entertainment 