THE EXPENDABLES 3 (2014) Dir: Patrick Hughes

What happens when old people decided they want to be cool and get down with the younger kids? They make a bloodless, PG-13 Action movie that kinda sucks but is fun for a rainy day. Well Stallone and his crew of OAP action badasses find themselves in this unfortunate position. (OAP stands for Original Action Pioneers, ha just thought of that on the spot, I am so awesome), Check out my review of Expendables 3 after the jump but be warned, it may contain nuts...i mean some spoilers....

Another year, another Expendables movie hits, you know that new action franchise from Sylvester Stallone and Avi Lerner's Nu Image production company. Well Barney Ross, Lee Christmas, Trench, Hale Ceaser, Gunner, Tollroad and Ying Yang are back for one more round of old folks pretending to be bad ass mother fuckers and well they still manage to pull it off. This time around, the world of EX has grown, added into the mix of badassery is Antonio Banderas, Kelsey Grammer and fresh from the poke, Wesley Snipes as a rival knife man or as he says in a back and forth with Statham's Lee christmas, He's the “knife before christmas”. These are the new additions to the older EX team but Stallone plumps for some younger blood to replace the old crew, so we get someone called Victor Ortiz, A Kellen Lutz (?), female MMA champ Rhonda Rousey and Glenn “fuckin'” Powell, a new breed of supposed badasses. The villain this time around, after the great Van Damme's wonderful performance as Jean Villaine in EX2, is the one and only Mad Max himself, Mel “Bloody” Gibson, playing the awesomely named Conrad Stonebanks which is probably the coolest name the EX films have had in the series.

After Stallone called the shots on the first EX film and Simon West kicked a lot of bum as the shot caller on EX, the directors chair, this time gets filled by newcomer, Aussie director, Patrick Hughes. For anyone unfamiliar with Hughes' work, his sole feature credit is the brilliant, atmospheric Aussie modern western, RED HILL, which I reviewed some time ago. Hughes may have been a bit under qualified to take on the franchise as he doesn't really have any big action experiences but i'll get onto that in a bit. For now lets take a look at the plot. I'll try my best to avoid spoilers.

Barney and co are assigned a new mission by Bruce Willis' replacement, Han solo, to find and capture an arms dealer, when it becomes clear that the arms dealer is in fact a person Barney believed to be dead and the former co-founder of the Expendables, Conrad Stonebanks. Shit hits the fan and the mission goes tit's up. Barney essentially fires the people who we go to see the movies for and instead enlists Frasier Crane to help recruit some younger more technically minded blood. Barney's first mission with the new crew goes tits up and those little cunts get captured by Stonebanks forcing Barney to turn into Rambo and go on a one man kamikaze mission to rescue and destroy Stonebanks once and for all. But the original crew decide that Barney's “too old for this shit” and decide to join him on his mission of revenge.

Personally I would have just let those young guns die.

Man oh man, how the times have changed, The Expendables movies should have been and remained for older audiences who were familiar with the old school action these old badasses came from, the ultra violence, the bad language, the practical stunts and the witty one liners, but the same thing has happened to the EX movies that happened to the Terminator flicks, with each the film the violence and such has toned down to this film, The Expendables 3, a film devoid of any bloodshed, swearing and witty one liners that don't come off parody, which was kinda fun in the first two. I can understand the reasoning for Stallone and Nu-Image opting for a PG-13 rating, they clearly wish to reach a wider audience and the EX movies have been quite good performers financially, but coming from Nu-Image, a company made famous for the hyper violent DTV action in the late 90s and early 00's, it's a bit of a crushing feeling to see these pioneer's of modern adult action, trying to get bums on seats by forgoing what they're well known for. Had this been a film made by PM Entertainment, this bad boy would have been rated Hard R or 18 in the U.K. But and this is the bit that I was hugely surprised at, the PG-13 rating doesn't necessarily harm the film, sure the violence in bloodless and some scenes don't feel real but because director Patrick Hughes handles the action well, it's not actually a problem, sure it suffers from Taken 2 syndrome where it seems to have been shot R-rated but edited in post to reflect a PG-13 cert with zooms and cuts from violence but in the grand scale of the film it's not a huge problem. I remember Stallone stating that the action in EX3 was to influenced by Gareth Evans' The Raid, well The Raid is an insanely violent, Expertly choreographed and shot film with a budget of $1.4mil, you cannot try and replicate something like that with a huge team of stunt performers, a multi million dollar budget and a PG-13 rating, at best, EX'3 action feels more like Jim Cameron's True Lies, yet less professional.

That's not to say the action doesn't look professional, not in slightest, just True Lies is a much more refined film, the action is spectacular. EX 3's action does looks great, the opening train scene, the docks, the gun battles and the tank shit at the end are well shot and done practically but other scenes suffer from an over use of green screen, which is all to obvious. This sadly drags the film down and can be a bit off putting in certain shots. Hughes did promise that most of the action would be practical and it is to a degree but it doesn't look like the previous two, Stallone's action on the first was fun and did use a bit of CG but there was much less in EX2. But EX3's action is bigger and louder than the previous 2 films and I think this is really what people will get enjoyment out of.

Right moving on to the cast, firstly, let me just say i'm not going to look into the ones we know are the proper expendables. We've all seen the first two and there's not much difference, although Lundgren says about three words throughout the entire movie, I'm going to look at the additions to the cast, kicking off with...Wesley Snipes, oh man it's good to see Snipes back on the screen, this ain't serious Snipes, you know the Blade, Passenger 57 Snipes, this is Simon Fucking Phoenix Snipes, having a blast and not giving a shit. He's having great fun as Statham's rival knife man and the rivalry and banter between the two is spot on, so glad to see him back on the big screen because his career hasn't done so well in the last few years and his unfortunate 2 year prison stint for tax evasion didn't really help, but the dude is back and we can all now forget about GalloWalker. Next onto to Kelsey Grammer, Why the fuck would you put Frasier Crane in an EX movie?, because he's awesome in it that's why, he's not the running gunning kinda character, he's the recruiter for the EX's, he finds the best in the biz. There's some great dialogue scenes between Stallone and Grammer which helps the film and injects a bit of humour into the script. So onto to El Mariachi, Mr. Antonio Banderas, playing a man who really really really really wants to be part of the team, a former spanish mercenary now working as a free agent, Banderas is quite funny but after a while his character starts to grate on you and the cast which is cleverly written into the film. He's still quite adept at action too and has a great fight sequence towards the end. Finally for the older gents joining the crew we have Indiana Han Solo Jones, taking over from Bruce Willis because he's a greedy lazy fuck, Harrison Ford plays Barney's new Agency contact and he's a chopper pilot, This is like a holiday for Ford, gets to hang around with bad asses, fly a chopper and drop an F-bomb in Stallone’s face. The dude is just awesome, at one point I expected him turn and say “don't get cocky kid”.

Now we unfortunately have to look at the younger additions to the crew. Starting with Rhonda Rousey, Terrible actress, badass fighter. Next, Victor Ortiz, dunno who the fuck this midget is, next, Glenn Fucking Powell, ( see Victor Ortiz for review) and finally Kellan Lutz, well he's probably the best of the new younger models, he's pretty badass in scenes and rides a dirt bike. That's pretty much about it for them.

Finally we get to the good stuff, MEL “FUCKING” GIBSON!!!, Gibson is on form as Conrad Stonebanks, the dude plays Crazy like no other and he fucking rocks. He plays Stonebanks like if Riggs decided to become a master criminal and it's awesome, he also makes intense look even more intense with his wild blue eyes and his maniacal jew hatin' grin. If you watch this flick for one reason and one reason only, do it for Mel.

So I have to end this review, The Expendables 3 has some issues, it's PG-13 rating doesn't really help matters but it's not a huge issue, the biggest issues the film has is over use of obvious green screen, the inclusion of new characters that have no place being in an EX movie, the lack of the proper EX team and the criminal under-use of Jet Li and Schwarzenegger. That being said, some of the old pro's joining the EX crew are great, Snipes, Grammer, Banderas and Gibson elevate the film above mediocre. The Action is handled as well as a first time action movie director can handle it, but suffers from some PG-13 editing and the script is a little bit clichéd but you don't go into an EX movie for the script, you go to see 60 year old action stars kick some fucking ass and show the kids of today how a real man blows shit up. It's not on the list of Stallone's best films of the last ten years but sits comfortably in front of Bullet To The Head but behind Escape Plan as his best of the last two or so years. All in all, it's a solid 2hrs of shit blowing up, so i'll give it a 3 out 5.