The Expendables 3 Movie Review

I have many problems with this movie even though I enjoyed it a fair amount. This rarely happens...

The Expendables 3 is directed by Patrick Hughes and stars Sylvester Stallone and pretty much every 1980s/1990s action star still alive and sees our favourite action movie heroes team up for a third time to shoot bad guys and prove they've still got it. The plot in a nutshell sees with Stallone basically ditching his old crew and seeking out newer, younger Expendables in order to track down and defeat an old enemy, played by Mel Gibson.

Now I do have many complaints about the movie but I would be lying if I said I wasn't happy going along for the ride which the film took me on. The movie does hint at just how great this franchise can be in a few enjoyable, well-constructed scenes. These include the opening scene in which Stallone lands a helicopter on a moving train and another scene halfway into the movie which involves Mel Gibson explaining just why he is evil. A lot of completely unbelievable stuff still happens in the movie which will make your brain turn into mashed potato but after 3 of these movies, this is what you should expect when buying a ticket.

There are some really good performances in the movie. The first one is buy Mel Gibson, who is probably the most talented actor in the entire film and he puts in a great performance as the Expendable's adversary. He's everything a good villain should be; menacing, witty and genuinely evil. The second great performance is from Harrison Ford, who brings to the table a lot more than Bruce Willis did in Expendables 2.

The rest of the cast aren't bad in their roles but they're really not good actors. A lot of the "older" Expendables aren't actually playing characters (like Gibson and Ford are) but rather parodies of themselves. Yes it is admittedly fun to watch Arnie say "Get to da choppa!!" in a movie again but I honestly would rather see the actors play characters and not parodies.

The movie spends 30 minutes setting up the group of younger Expendables but they are extremely underdeveloped and the long set up of these characters never pays off in the film's final act. Kellan Lutz who I gave a tonne of shit to for his god-awful performance in The Legend of Hercules is one of the new "younger" Expendables and he isn't actually terrible. However, Antonio Banderas is one of the most annoying side characters in recent times and MMA fighter Ronda Rousey didn't really show her acting chops.

Finally the action can be fun but most of the time it is edited to crap and doesn't show the blood, gore or violence which we as fans want to see. CGI blood is replaced by white powder and it just does not look good. If they had a higher rating for this movie they could really go for it and give us the brutal, violent and unrelenting action which the 1980s and 90s was famous for.

With all that said, I actually enjoyed the movie, and there'd be no point in me denying it:


Rating - C+


1 sentence summary - Enjoyable, but plays more as a parody of 80s/90s action movies rather than a celebration of them!


Thanks for reading,
Matt