Actors: Sylvester Stallone,
Jason Statham, Antonio Banderas, Jet Li, Wesley Snipes, Dolph Lundgren, Kelsey
Grammer, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, Kellan Lutz, Ronda Rousey, Glen Powell,
Victor Ortiz, Robert Davi, Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford, Arnold Schwarzenegger
Rating: 7 out of 10, This
movie was much better watching a second time.
It wasn’t a great attempt at moving the franchise into a younger
generation. I was surprised that they
chose to veer away from the entertaining by-play between the aged mercenaries
to play to a non-memorable group of youngsters.
Even the aggressive use of performance enhancing drugs cannot hide the
onslaught of time on Stallone and Schwarzenegger although it was good to see
Mel Gibson back at work as a passable villain.
Even Harrison Ford showed up for some unknown reason but at least he had
the class to look slightly embarrassed. The
earlier two movies were entertaining if cartoonish. The new director decided to go all the way
into cartoonish. Stallone also wrote
this movie which was a surprise since he’s still a pretty good writer, if not
judged by this. The biggest failures
were the young Expendables who dropped the baton which was being lazily handed
to them by the seniors. This is the kind
of movie though that requires the suspension of disbelief and immersion into mayhem. On that level it works fairly well.
MVP: Banderas as
Galgo the non-stop talking comedic relief.
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