'The Expendables 3' review by Captain Raptor

'The Expendables 3' review by Captain Raptor

An appreciation for the past is certainly a positive thing, but Sylvester Stallone's levels of nostalgia borders on a psychological disorder. With Grudge Match, Escape Plan and sequels to Rocky and Rambo, his entire 21st Century career seems to be based around films he made decades ago. The Expendables has been the best result of this - although that's not saying much - partly because it is at least self-aware enough to mock itself before the audience does. While they've never exactly been astounding, the past two in the series have been reliably amusing forays into ridiculousness, in spite of everything. 

So, there are obvious points to get out of the way first: the characters and plot are threadbare, pathos and emotion are kept to an absolute minimum, it hasn't a single original thought in its brain and the whole affair displays as much intelligence as a squashed grape. But these are the predictable gripes about a series that's never tried to succeed on these levels. The surprising thing is that The Expendables 3 fails at the things it's supposed to be good at. The action is appalling - at first I wondered why the camera angles changed so frequently that you couldn't see what was happening, but after a while I noticed that nothing was happening. The first act has a lengthy action scene in which very little action actually occurs - few bullets are fired, the enemy's casualty rate is almost as low as the film's paltry box office intake, and the whole sequence mostly entails the eponymous mercenaries running away whilst spouting bizarrely nonsensical bravado. The second act is even worse and is one of the most grueling trials of patience I've ever had to endure. Stallone's character kicks out the rest of his team and goes on a recruitment drive, and is taken on a tour of characters who are so boring and undeveloped they can't even qualify as generic. There's literally no set-pieces or action here aside from a few momentary alleyway scuffles, so we're left with something truly god-awful - Stallone delivering dialogue.

This is so awful for two reasons, the first being that the dialogue in this film is absolute garbage. Gone are the ridiculously cheesy one-liners, the angry yelling and the testosterone-fulled repartee, that while all being hit and miss, at least they occasionally contained a hit. They've been replaced with banal, humourless statements that primarily seem to exist purely to take up space. The few attempts made to engage in that style of banter are weak - lines like "But you're still an idiot" are delivered as if they were some sort of cutting insult. The other reason the second act is so resolutely miserable is Stallone himself. He delivers every line as slowly as he can, possibly in a misguided attempt to make it sound more measured and serious. Combined with his signature mumbled register, the actual effect it has is turning an already dull line into a world-class example of  how to bore a viewer into frustration. One of the tiny, minimal redeeming features of this film is a different performance; Mel Gibson's moustache-twirlingly evil villain adds a few moments of spark and panache that livens things up a bit. Credit should also go to Antonio Banderas for being the only other cast member to summon up any energy or vigour, even if he isn't given the material to do anything worthwhile with it. In terms of other things that aren't awful, the final battle of the third act is the only other one I can think of - the action reaches a more substantially entertaining level, and the larger scale makes it easier to forgive all the grating dialogue. 

The Expendables weren't exactly at dizzying heights to begin with, but this third installment has still fallen a remarkable distance. All the expected flaws haven't been improved upon - the repetitiveness, the caricatured characters, the nationalism and other casual bigotry, the self-aggrandizing nature and the general stupidity - but to an extent these can be worked around with good enough action and humour. Unfortunately, both of these aspects are unmitigated failures. An action film can be many negative things and still be enjoyable, but it's unforgivable for a movie so brainless to also be so unrelentingly tedious. The Expendables 3 isn't just bad; frankly, it's pathetic.