The expendables III: Too many biggies without business

The expendables III

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Statham, Antonio Banderas, Wesley Snipes & others

Rated: 5.5/10

Seventeen top Hollywood stars of ages ranging between 70 and 24, a lot of old world dry humour coating old world action, an attempt to train an entirely new crop for a possible E4 and a whole lot of ‘remember, we did that in E and E2 too without much of a story’ makes for the latest Expendables series.

Sly as head of action mission, flies sometimes to Somalia, sometimes to Romania and sometimes around a prison in unnamed territory. He and his buddies have noticeably aged and he thinks most of them are expendable — not because he has had enough of them but because he needs to spare their lives in a one-way mission against former Expendable. And yes, at 68, he is still the super blink-less zombie he started off as when Rambo became a sensation. But that he feels the need for young blood insertion into his missions is enough indication that, years are catching up with our very ownExpendables.

Having said that, the so-called newbies (from computer freaks to rock climbers to a female best-in-the-business martial arts fighter, to the irritatingly garrulous Antonio Banderas), lack the chutzpah of the oldies who are made to twiddle their thumbs with Sly taking the action away from them. Another matter that you know they will be back to save the movie which, despite all the bombarding, bullets & tanks, threatens to slip into a strange kind of ennui.

The problem with E3 is that it is unnecessarily crowded with too many biggies like Arnie and Ford. Even Mel Gibson and Wesley Snipes get very little to do in the film which hits singularly on Sly, the stone faced muscleman of yore. As the unscrupulous Expendable who has crossed over to the “dark side”, Gibson is largely unconvincing and, perhaps, Snipes could have done a better job of being the ruthless Stonebanks.

Not that such movies need an engaging storyline but a whiff of a story would have done well for E3. Other than that, from E to E2 to now E3, there’s been hardly any addition or subtraction in content so familiarity, that too resting on old shoulders, tends to breed a whiff of contempt. For the Sly-Arnie-Ford kind of lovers, there’s not enough any which way.

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 24 August, 2014