The Expendables 3

The Expendables 3

Rating 5.5 out of 10

Admittedly with these Expendable movies the bar is set pretty low.  No one walks into one of these movies expecting a great well thought out plot.  The draw is seeing an amazing collection of action heroes (most) from yesteryear come in and blow up a bunch of stuff.  I greatly enjoyed the first two movies.  This one not nearly as much.

Sylvester Stalone is back as Barney Ross- the leader of the Expendables.  He also is one of the main writers to the movies.  With Expendables 3 he just tries too hard.  Instead of just sticking with what works he tries to work emotions into it.  The bad guy (this time Mel Gibson) is a very bad guy from Barney's past that was supposed to be dead.  Clearly he is not and in their first battle he manages to gravely injure one of the Expendables which makes Ross realize he cares too much for the group of bad-arses and he retires them.  Thus he is able to bring in a new group of younger Expendables to finish the job on Gibson.  Stalone seems more interested in a revolving door of bringing in a different person than a story that makes any sense at all.

For me the cardinal sin is the action.  As I said you don't expect much of a plot line.  I was disappointed that they reverted to shaky cam on many or most of the fight scenes and zoomed in so close most of the time you couldn't tell what was really going on.  These are not prima donna movie stars.  They are (admittedly aging) action stars.

I was mildly entertained here.  The list of action stars is impressive  Just a little disappointed in the outcome.  Out of the list of Expendable movies this one is definitely 3.