Film Review: The Expendables 3

The Expendables 3. Rated M (action violence and coarse language). 126 minutes. Directed by Patrick Hughes. Screenplay by Sylvester Stallone, Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt.

Verdict: Chaos reigns as the Kings of Cinema shoot lots of people.

You have to hand it to Sylvester Stallone. That The Expendables works at all is due not only to his monumental onscreen presence, but his ability to gather all his mates together into one of the largest ensembles in recent memory. And what a cast it is.

The spectacular opening sequence (there’s always one in an Expendables movie) sees Barney (Stallone) and the team freeing Doctor Death (Wesley Snipes) from a train that is delivering him to a high-tech prison. The team needs the good Doctor’s help intercepting a shipment of weapons being sent to arms trader Conrad Stonebanks (Mel Gibson) in Somalia. When the operation goes pear-shaped, Barney retires the old team members and recruits a new, more agile and technologically savvy gang.

The fatal flaw in the concept lies in the casting of Mel Gibson, who is spectacular. Plagued with all sorts of public relations disasters in his private life, Gibson burns up the screen from start to finish. When you add Harrison Ford (who replaces Bruce Willis) and the indefatigable Arnold Schwarzenegger to the mix, the young’uns (including Kellan Lutz who is currently starring as Hercules) are at a distinct disadvantage.

Australian-born Hughes and cinematographer Peter Menzies Jr are on their way to becoming a formidable duo behind the camera, but the chronic over editing (Sean Albertson and Paul Harb) suggests that this is not the break-through they might have hoped for. There are some magnificent close-ups of Stallone, Gibson and Ford (whose faces reveal years of cinema history), but the bulk of this disappointing outing for the Kings of Cinema is just migraine-inducing, blood-lusty chaos.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.