You wouldn't believe how excited I got when The Expendables hit theaters in 2010. A movie that brought so many of my favorite action movie stars being brought together was something that I absolutely had to see. I can say the same for the sequel, and in both instances, I was pleasantly surprised with both movies. But now that a third Expendables movie is upon us, that excitement is lessened. The feeling of nostalgia has worn off, and I can't say I was really looking forward to seeing this new adventure. And unlike the first two, the third movie isn't quite as good as I'd hoped either.
As the movie begins, we're quickly reintroduced to Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) and the Expendables as they extract former teammate Doc (Wesley Snipes) from a prison transport train. Having successfully staged their daring jailbreak, the Expendables make a stop in Somalia, where they've been tasked with breaking up a black market arms trade. Their mission goes awry, however, when they realize the broker behind the trade is Conrad Stonebanks (Mel Gibson), a former Expendable who went rogue and became a ruthless international gunrunner. Stonebanks goes on the attack, effortlessly defeating the Expendables and leaving one of them critically wounded.
Word of the incident gets back to CIA operative Max Drummer (Harrison Ford), who approaches an angry Barney and tasks him with bringing in Stonebanks alive so that he can be tried at the Hauge for numerous war crimes. Unwilling to put his friends in harm's way again, Barney disbands the Expendables and hires a new team of young mercenaries to accomplish his mission. After calling in a few favors from old rival Trench Mauser (Arnold Schwarzenegger), Barney and his new team are able to track down Stonebanks. But their foe is anticipating them, once again getting the upper hand. Faced with no other options, Barney must get the old gang back together if he is to save his new team and bring Stonebanks to justice.
I can't say I didn't enjoy The Expendables 3. But there's just something about it that held it back from being as good as the previous ones. Maybe it's the nostalgia wearing off, like I said earlier. The novelty of seeing all these stars in the same movie can only last for so long. (Why do you think they stopped making sequels to Ocean's Eleven?) There's something missing here, but I still enjoyed the movie. So at least it's got that going for it, right?
Director Patrick Hughes does a decent enough job helming the movie. But that's the thing, though: his efforts are just decent. He's not a bad director, but his work here doesn't really do much to make the movie any better than "okay." I really did enjoy the climactic shootout at the end of the movie, but outside of that, Hughes manages to bring only just enough energy to make the rest of the movie watchable. The ultra-fast editing and frenetic camerawork don't help at all, and it feels like the movie was seriously trimmed (and clumsily so at times) in order to achieve a PG-13 rating instead of the R the previous two got. And then there's the obvious, fake-looking CG effects that, while not quite enough to take a viewer out of the movie, still feel like they were rushed in at the last minute. It honestly comes across like there's parts of the movie where people just couldn't bother to give it 100% effort.
I could actually say the same for the script. Credited to Sylvester Stallone, Creighton Rothenberger, and Katrin Benedikt, the script doesn't really give us anything more than what we already expected from it going in. I could forgive the generic, run-of-the-mill story had something interesting been done with it. But the catch is that it's generic to the point of serious predictability. It's the kind of script that puts the movie in a "if you've seen it once, you've seen it a million times" type of situation. You know as soon as Barney sends the old Expendables on their way that he'll have to bring them back once his new team gets in over their heads, and that the new and old teams won't see eye to eye thanks to the generation gap but find common ground and become friends by the end of the movie. Add in the fact that the movie runs out of steam early on and doesn't pick up again until the climax, and you're left with something that is sadly duller than it should have been.
To the writers' credit, I did like the cute references to the cast's lives and past work. Wesley Snipes's character claims to have been sent to prison for tax evasion, Arnold Schwarzenegger quotes his famed "get to the chopper!" line from Predator, and so on. They even work in a reference to the fact that Harrison Ford was hired at the very last minute to replace Bruce Willis. But after a while, these go from funny to just enough to make you crack a smile to making you wish they'd come up with some new jokes. Maybe it's me, but self-referential humor only really works in small doses unless you're a goofball comedy (see: 22 Jump Street earlier this summer) or a full-blown parody.
But at least the cast is up for a little "wink wink, nudge nudge" humor. Sadly, they otherwise come off as if they're simply going through the motions. One gets the feeling that they're just there to collect a paycheck and burn off a little spare time by making a movie. Only a handful of actors really stand out, whether they be good or bad, since the majority of the cast are sailing a big boat of mediocrity down this cinematic river. Antonio Banderas is really funny as a talkative, over-enthusiastic mercenary who keeps pestering Barney for a spot on the Expendables team, while Mel Gibson makes his character as vicious as he can. Gibson doesn't get a whole lot of room to stretch his legs acting-wise, but he still does a great job.
Wesley Snipes, meanwhile, provides a fun moment or two, but he feels wasted here. I really enjoy Snipes when he's allowed to run wild (his performance in Demolition Man made for one of my favorite action movie villains), but he is lost in the shuffle of the huge cast. And among the new Expendables, none of them make any sort of impact beyond Ronda Rousey. Rousey, the current UFC women's bantamweight champion, was hired because she's a notoriously tough MMA fighter. But she's not an actress, and her enthusiasm and the effort she puts forth aren't enough to hide her inexperience. At least she's trying, so at least I'll give Rousey props for that.
I wasn't really that excited for The Expendables 3 when I sat down to watch it. I didn't know why, but once the credits rolled, I realized what the problem was. The problem was that the movie just wasn't as good as it could have been.
Final Rating: **½
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