The Expendables 3 - Review

This movie series is to action fans like ice cream to little kids. Every action star that’s ever made a great movie is in this movie. Let’s review!!

WARNING: Following is a review so Spoilers Ahead.

         The Expendables are a team of mercenaries, who do very risky jobs, right now they’re about to rescue a prisoner from an armored train. Because: who will miss them?

At first we see the usual mission the Expendables movies start with; the team right now is decimated from the last movie, and now they take on once again another score.

        There’s a prisoner they need to rescue on a train but things get difficult when the bad guys bring up the big artillery; fortunately, good, old Plan B comes in useful when a cool little wire that just snaps a cannon rifle right off the train, like nothing. Now they’re rescuing the prisoner, or Wesley Snipes, who has been imprisoned for 8 years, I think.

Seeking revenge he takes over the train and runs it full speed against the Denzali Prison containing his arresting officer and blowing up the whole place.

Now that he’s safe, he’s ready to open up; I didn’t notice any post-traumatic stress in him. He explains how he’s the best knife-man; with Christmas being the current best knife-man of the team a little competition started up between the two of them. He also used to be a doctor.

He also explains how Barney and the team hang up fallen brothers’ tags in the plane.

All excited about being back, Snipes already has plans to eat a nice dinner shower… but unfortunately for him Barney (Stallone) had to break the news for him: Doc (Snipes) is the new addition to the Expendables, and they have a contract right off the bat.

A bomb trade is going to happen on a boat in Mogadishu, Somalia, and the Expendables are there to stop it. They meet up with Cesar from the previous movie, a super-badass. With his assistance on their little boat they infiltrate the ship undetected, with doc trying to show off… and he is not seen??

They hide in a container controlled by Doc to view the deal going down. When the client arrives, a bad surprise awaits Barney; an old buddy of his (Mel Gibson, Conrad Stonebanks), thought dead, turned bad and started making millions doing real bad stuff; Barney snaps and starts gun blazing down on Stonebanks and his guards; outgunned they have to retreat into the bunker, and then they have to retreat at all.

Fortunately Hale Cesar comes in with the big gun and starts raining bullets on the bad guys; lots of bad guys are dead and now they are all safe in a corner, or so they thought… Stonebanks shows up with his big sniper and shoots Cesar in the back. He almost bled to death and now he’s in the hospital, and might not make it.

And now, the moment we’ve all being waiting for, California’s former governor, 4 times terminator title holder….(Drum Roll)…. Schwartzie!!! He shows up and asks about Cesar at the hospital. He admits he’s thinking about retirement and suggests Barney the same.

And as if it could not be better, Harrison Ford substitutes Bruce Willis (Church) from the previous movie as Max Drummer, a washed up CIA agent.

Unfortunately Ford had to say that non-funny stroke joke, like “take it easy, you’re gonna get a stroke” which was clearly trying (but failed) to be funny.

Now, all the expendables are at the infamous bar Rusty’s, which was shown in the earlier movies, and Stallone has to announce his leaving the team, not retiring but leaving the team. His buddy Christmas did try and failed to stop him, unfortunately.

Looking for a new team, Barney now turns to his buddy Bonaparte, who apparently is a street fight “pimp”, if you will, who can find recruits very easily. Why does Stallone need a new team you ask? Well he wants to take down Stonebanks (Mel Gibson), but not with the old team because he’ feel guilty. So now to the recruits:

FIRST RECRUIT: Thorn, or Glen Powell; he’s apparently an outstanding climber and a hacker.

        SECOND RECRUIT: the stunning wrestler Ronda Rousey, who makes a living being a bouncer; she made a good first impression on both Bonaparte and Barney.

        THIRD RECRUIT: well actually, he’s not the third, he’s actually not the third because of what I’ll tell you next, but moving on; Galgo, or Antonio Banderas who is a selfish athlete, and apparently he applied multiple times for a job, but got rejected because of his age, and that happened again for Stallone’s team.

        REAL THIRD RECRUIT: boxer Victor Ortiz, or Mars; he’s a soldier and a weapon expert; he manufactures and creates rifles and other weapons for the military and now for the team.

        LAST BUT NOT LEAST: actor Kellan Lutz; when Stallone and Bonaparte go see him he takes part in a street fight, which he purposely lost to get more money. Though reluctant, Barney takes him in anyway.

       

        Barney finally finds his contract for Stonebanks from the CIA, the only bummer: Stonebanks needs to be caught alive; Barney receives Stonebanks’ file discovering slaughtered soldiers.

        While Barney and the new team are packing up, the old (literally old) team shows up and they start trash talking with the new team, with jokes about how old they are; guess they’re mad about Barney leaving the team; who is by the way piloting the plane with Schwartzie.

        On the plane ride Barney let Smilee see the file; he saw that Stonebanks has the classic Crow on a skull tattoo on his arm which resembles loyalty to the Expendables

        A really figurative scene is played, when we see all the members of the old team on their “normal” lives without all the action, it was pretty meaningful as all of those people’s lives are anything but normal.

        The new team now is on a reconnaissance mission to find out Stonebanks’ fire and men power so a situation is played out and we see Stonebanks has a huge army of guards all around him and some hidden; now the team has to plan a mission.

        Barney makes a plan which was a good one, in quote “1995” and the whole new team has a new good plan with the help of current century gear; so they plan to hack onto the surveillance and let the team get in place and take Stonebanks.

        The plan unravels successfully and Stonebanks’ is taken. Now that they have Stonebanks, Barney has the chance to have a nice little chat, too bad Stonebanks had a GPS tracker and his guards are here to free him, there is some big chaos and Barney is now stranded.

        As soon as Barney goes back to the plane Schwartzie and a message from Stonebanks awaits him; Stonebanks has his new team and he wants Barney to go get them himself.

        Stallone is again left with no team and even though Schwartzie + Stallone sounds good, frankly it wouldn’t be as cool as you’d think, and no, Stallone doesn’t turn to the old team.

        Galgo (Banderas) shows up at his planesteps, if you will, and they immediately bond…. Ok, not exactly immediately, in fact they don’t really bond at all, as Galgo can’t stop talking.

        As soon as they run a few errands they are on their way to kick ass; on their way the old team stops them and becomes….. Well, still the old team, but they are in play again with Barney.

        They reach destination and they get to the soldiers; after Stonebanks reveals his plan to blow up the whole building, the two teams merge. Thorn finally finds a way to hack into all the bombs and delay the explosion up until the battery lives. There was a little thing that upset me, in the room where the young Expendables were held, there was a webcam placed so that Stonebanks could see the whole thing, the guys didn’t even bother taking it off. Pissed, Stonebanks sends in all his troops to fight the Expendables. But, wait, a war couldn’t be a war without the Schwartzie-Lee-Ford team, who came in guns blazing in a helicopter, and Ford had to come out with that annoying stroke joke.

        After every enemy soldier is dead Stallone and Stonebanks obviously have a big boss fight which Stallone ends up winning of curse. The battery is dead so Barney is rushed to the helicopter while the building is blowing up behind him.

        He finally makes it to the rope on the copter; the team is now making jokes about pulling him up or not, which was pretty funny.

         Cesar made it fortunately so they all go celebrate at Rusty’s with a good beer. There is a little flirty, flirty between Luna (Ronda Rousey) and Barney when he announces they’re all in the team. The team is all together: old and young… and Galgo, which was a really nice addition that made the movie not suck too badly. Now Cesar’s back, Stonebanks dead, and they’re all happy and well.

VEDICT

       The movie wasn’t too bad, I get the feeling that people don’t understand it was intentionally trying to have old characters, it’s the whole concept of the movie; I had really low expectations before I watched it, but it did surprise me.

The age jokes weren’t too bad except for the stroke one. From what I heard they are making a fourth installment to the series, though the trailer did say “They are back for one LAST ride.”

It struck me that there was no chuck Norris. The story is very much like the previous movies, and I hope they’ll at least change it a little bit in the next one.

The cast choice was great as new Actors/Fighters are mixed with the old ones, which is the source of 80% of the jokes.

SCORE

7.5/10