I will start by saying this is my least favourite of the Expendables franchise. I thought it seemed a little obvious they'd trimmed the violence and it didn't have the immediacy of pacing the other ones had. Niggles aside, this is still fantastic, machine gun toting, head smashing, building demolishing entertainment.
There's no getting away from the site of a helicopter gunship being piloted by Harrison Ford, whilst Arnie and Jet Li man the guns and lay waste to an army, transcends awesome and approaches hitherto undiscovered levels of gung ho nirvana.
Mel Gibson makes a great villain, one of the best scenes is his conversation with Barney in the back of the van on the nature of their business.
The new Expendables are perfectly good, as far as their involvement goes, but the task they have is to make us like them as much as we have Sly, Arnie, Harrison, Dolph etc over the last thirty years, only they've got two hours to do it in. Tall order.
What saves the day here again, as with the other Expendables, is the same thing that elevates these movies above all the CGI, wire-fu, teenage fantasy movies we get every year, purporting to be "action movies", legitimacy !! All these guys look, act and have the undeniable pedigree of being real action heroes.
They have a history through this type of film and they wear that history on their sleeves in these movies. That's why when they start vaporising the bad guys, it feels more.. legitimate.
I hope there's a Expendables 4, as there are a few things they could improve on next time. But for now Expendables 3 is great fun, I mean where else are you going to see Rambo and Frasier drinking in a nightclub?
There's no getting away from the site of a helicopter gunship being piloted by Harrison Ford, whilst Arnie and Jet Li man the guns and lay waste to an army, transcends awesome and approaches hitherto undiscovered levels of gung ho nirvana.
Mel Gibson makes a great villain, one of the best scenes is his conversation with Barney in the back of the van on the nature of their business.
The new Expendables are perfectly good, as far as their involvement goes, but the task they have is to make us like them as much as we have Sly, Arnie, Harrison, Dolph etc over the last thirty years, only they've got two hours to do it in. Tall order.
What saves the day here again, as with the other Expendables, is the same thing that elevates these movies above all the CGI, wire-fu, teenage fantasy movies we get every year, purporting to be "action movies", legitimacy !! All these guys look, act and have the undeniable pedigree of being real action heroes.
They have a history through this type of film and they wear that history on their sleeves in these movies. That's why when they start vaporising the bad guys, it feels more.. legitimate.
I hope there's a Expendables 4, as there are a few things they could improve on next time. But for now Expendables 3 is great fun, I mean where else are you going to see Rambo and Frasier drinking in a nightclub?