The Expendables 3 (2014)

The boys are back in town...again! and this time its PG-13 baby (sigh). All the Expendable team are back after yet another successful mission where they all had their invincibility cheats on...accept for Crews who forgot to enter his cheat code and gets nailed. But don't go getting too excited because low and behold he survives, they must have found an energy health power-up for him.

So the lads are getting on a bit these days, Arnie and Sly are pushing 70 years of age and the rest of the team aren't that far behind...well some of them. Anyway despite that Sly thinks its time to hang up everybody's boots because they are now officially (according to him) too old, yet Sly still carries on with the next mission even though he's the oldest and clearly looks the worst for wear. So off he goes to hire some young blood with the help of...Kelsey Grammer? really?? what action movies has he starr...never mind. So bottom line the tough old guns are out, the new young guns are in...aaaand there goes the entire premise of the franchise.

The whole plot is basically a play on how these guys are too old for this shit, yet in reality they're all genuinely too old for this shit (some of them) but they're still doing it!...badly.

The plot is not worth discussing really, its the usual good guys vs the bad guys this time led by Mel Gibson...the end. As you would/should expect its pretty much exactly the same spiel as the fist two films but with new team members. There are little remarks throughout from various characters that touch on the fact the movie is a complete parody of itself which didn't really make me smile. Instead they just got me thinking how stupid this whole exercise was and how sharp and accurate those little quips are...but not in a funny way, a serious way, like stop this ridiculous charade and lets get back to old school for Gods sake. What's more the little quips merely pinpoint what is actually wrong with this entire franchise...'so what our plan is to kick down the door and start spraying bullets?', 'that's a great plan...if its 1985'. Yes that's what we want! Oh Lord! if only this film was the caliber of a 1985 adult action flick! if only!

So as we know all the old school action men we wanna see have been left behind accept for Sly's ego. We are now left with some young guys I've never heard of accept for Lutz and a female MMA fighter who cannot act TO SAVE HER LIFE. Seriously I've haven't seen such bad acting in a major movie for some time, it was embarrassing to watch her try and be butch and tough. Her first sequence as the bouncer in that nightclub literately made me laugh out loud, absolutely terrible. The entire montage thing was so flippin' cliched, would have been OK if it was actually good.

Everybody is covered in thick tan makeup its cringeworthy. Sly's face looks like a beaten slab of meat, Arnie has dyed hair, Ford looks dreadfully old (why he agreed to act in this I'll never know) and for some reason they turn Banderas into a bitch. The action isn't as bad as I thought it would be in places I'll admit. There is a solid punch to it at times but it really needs some claret to fly, it yearns for it, some nice fat exploding bloody squibs. Overall its choppy (no pun intended), the thrills can be decent but without warning all of a sudden it drops into pure crapola, awful CGI choppers and a dirt bike stunt sequence? really?? you could clearly see the course and dirt covered ramps!

As we plod slowly towards the predictable ending of the old school Expendables having to save the young newbies things just become more and more...annoying. All the team members are like explosive Gods raining down pain on all the faceless useless military that are swarming all over them. Not even tanks can stop them, how can a countries military be so utterly useless? Arnie throws out not one but two choppa quips that date back to his famous lines in 'Predator', Gibson's dialog is hilariously bad as is his over acting when he finally gets killed off by super Sly and as with before no one gets killed or even injured. I've said it before and I'll say it again, these films would be so much cooler if some of the good guys got killed off.

Yeah its a parody of sorts and not to be taken seriously even though Sly is clearly taking it all very seriously. Sly if you wanna be a serious badass then make these adult rated action movies. I have not taken to this franchise from day one after it became apparent they weren't gonna be proper action movies like I remember. I grew up watching these guys in real hardcore adult flicks where the blood flowed, limbs flew and the f-bombs detonated in every other line. This franchise does not give me what I remember, and I'm not even wearing my rose tinted specs. These guys need to remember their roots, the roots that made them famous, they didn't become famous for childish PG family fun films. Alas now I fear time has passed many of them by and unfortunately this was not a good final curtain.

4/10