The Expendables 3 (UK Rating: 12A)
There’s a moment in The Expendables 3 (released in UK cinemas on Thursday, 14th August) which says it all. While Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) and his team are on their big mission, helicopter pilot Trench (Arnie Schwarzenegger) is left waiting for them. As he checks their e.t.a. he complains, “Hurry up. This is boring.” Bullseye!
The Expendables 3 isn’t just a routine action film – it’s far worse than that. The story, such as it is, concerns Ross and his team of aging mercenaries undertaking a mission that goes disastrously wrong – but, among all the bullets, he also notices a face from the past: Conrad Stonebanks (Mel Gibson) who Barney believed was dead. Back at base, he’s ordered by the CIA’s Drummer (Harrison Ford) to capture Stonebanks and bring him back to stand trial for war crimes but, after the fiasco of the last mission, Barney decides to get a new team. A younger one.
Stallone came up with the idea for the film – which can’t have taken long – and also co-wrote the script, so a lot of the blame for this piece of clichd tosh is well and truly his. The members of the audience who left before the credits started to roll wouldn’t have seen that, but they were, to put it mildly, voting with their feet. Who can blame them? It is, as Arnie unintentionally points out, boring – bog-standard action sequences, deeply dull characters, a Swiss cheese storyline and precious little humour. That’s not to say that they don’t try to raise a laugh, but most of what passes for gags is drowned out by the sheer noise of it all. Those that do break through are hardly worth it, like Harrison Ford not being able to understand a word Jason Statham says. It’s so tedious that counting the number of explosions is probably more interesting. There’s about 40, by the way.
For all the action, bullets and explosions, it’s a remarkably bloodless film. The death toll at the end must run into thousands and the number of bullets fired would keep a munitions factory in business for months, yet there’s little in the way of actual injury, apart from the occasional graze. Not that buckets of gore would have improved things, but it does mean the film feels even more artificial and somewhat cartoon-like.
Given that this is number three in the series, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect a sense of the cast enjoying working together again, but not even that is in evidence. The only person who appears to be having fun is one of the new members of the team, Antonio Banderas, as a talkative Latino. He does at least bring a smile to the face, but he’s the only one.
