As expendable as Kleenex and as feasible as digital toilet paper, THE EXPENDABLES 3 has expanded the franchise with even more star power with the addition of Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson fondling the nostalgia zone of 80s action movies aficionados to climactic climes.
For those, like me, who have not seen the first two in the franchise, Sylvester Stallone plays Barney Ross, co-founder of this elite bash and crash mercenary outfit. His second in command is a guy called Christmas played by Jason Statham. The extant team is Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, and Terry Crews as Caesar.
The film opens with the gang busting out a former member, Doctor Death (Wesley Snipes) from a prison train. The Doc used to be a military medic but swapped swipes and IVs for edged weapons. Snipes starts chewing up the scenery with snippy, snappy psycho dude antics like dry shaving his full beard with a combat knife and coming out looking like he’s been in a day spa.
The action jack-knifes into a hit on an arms smuggling caper by the crew that has dire consequences for Caesar who is critically injured. To make matters worse, the casualty is inflicted by Stonebanks, cofounder with Ross of the original Expendables and thought long dead.
Ross, fearing that a personal vendetta will put his old team at personal risk, decides to disband and travels with recruiter Bonaparte (Kelsey Grammar) to enlist a new, younger, tech savvy bunch.
This bunch of wet behind the ears, years younger cohorts, including a token female who is recruited for her bar bouncing skills, lack the experience and charisma of any of the old guard, and it is up to the geriatric gladiators to come like the cavalry and save the day.
Like some lurking, lurching guilty pleasure, THE EXPENDABLES 3 is way too long to successfully sustain maximum interest – the recruitment of the newbys is as flat and static as Sly’s dialogue delivery – but the screen presence of Gibson, Ford, Schwarzenegger, Snipes – superannuated super luminaries- has undeniable frisson and star fire power.
Antonio Banderas is also thrown into the mix as a sort of Puss in Boots type, a lithe and lethal Lothario. As one of the team states, he could talk an adversary to death, and his constant patter is annoying, yet the female audience at the screening I attended laughed long, loud and a lot whenever he was on screen, so obviously there’s a demographic successfully exploited in his casting.
Cheesy as a fondue fantasy, this is the bastard seed of Rocky and Rambo artificially inseminated by a lethal weapon, a total recall to arms of the action faction that fueled French fries film franchises far long ago.