The Expendables 3 by Patrick Hughes on Blu-ray My rating: 7 out of 10 stars
In THE EXPENDABLES 3, Barney (Stallone), Christmas (Statham) and the rest of the team come face-to-face with Conrad Stonebanks (Gibson), who years ago co-founded The Expendables with Barney. Stonebanks subsequently became a ruthless arms trader and someone who Barney was forced to kill… or so he thought. Stonebanks, who eluded death once before, now is making it his mission to end The Expendables — but Barney has other plans. Barney decides that he has to fight old blood with new blood, and brings in a new era of Expendables team members, recruiting individuals who are younger, faster and more tech-savvy. The latest mission becomes a clash of classic old-school style versus high-tech expertise in the Expendables’ most personal battle yet.
This is good, actually really good, entertainment if you take it for what it is. This is a rather silly orgy in macho stereotypes, action, whacky comments, action, blowing things up, action, shooting people, did I mention action? As such a movie it fulfills its purpose admirably. Actually, if that would be the only criteria for what constitutes a good movie this would be a 10 out of 10 star movie.
However, there is more to a really good movie than that and, as should be no surprise this movie falls short in most other aspects. It is the third movie in this series and as such the content of this movie should really be no surprise. The plot is nothing fantastic but it is not totally ludicrous either. I would say that it is good enough for the movie.
The one thing that I would complain about is that there were really too many characters and none of them was really allowed to shine much. It really became too fragmented with this new team versus old team plot. The only one that really had a good part where his character was allowed to actually perform was Mel Gibson as the bad guy. The rest where more like guest stars. I guess this was the intention but it was really more obvious in this movie than in the previous ones. I have to say that, personally, I was not really very found of Antonio Banderas rather silly role either.
As far as action and explosive special effects goes this movie does not disappoint. A few minutes of the final shootout would have blown the budget of most other movies and it went on and on seemingly forever. Sure, it was unrealistic and nonsensical for a lot of the time but it was still fun to watch. I also quite liked Harrison Ford when he made his appearance.
Bottom line for me is that it was good entertainment and enjoyable two hours. It was pretty much what I expected. One thing that increased the enjoyment factor for me was that the Blu-ray disc had one of the better soundtracks that I have listened to in a long while. The track truly exercised my subwoofer without going overboard with silly low frequency rumbling and still dialogue and music came through very well. There were a lot of well positioned surround effects as well. Truly a delight to listen to.
PG's Ramblings 