Dearest Blog, yesterday it was off to the pictures for something that
gets me as excited as landing on The Nice List come Christmas Eve: a
new Expendables movie.
Spoiler level here will be mild-ish, mostly nothing you wouldn't know from the trailers.
Barney adds some fresh faces to his team, in hopes of bringing down an old foe.
Reader(s),
let's just get this out of the way: I think the Expendables franchise
is the most awesomely awesome awesome in the history of awesome. I
didn't love the second installment *quite* as well as the first--it felt
a lot like throwing more names at the screen just to see what
stuck--and trailers led me to fear the new one might be more of the
same. While part three definitely does offer an expanded array of
ass-kickers, I am happy to declare it the best of the franchise (so
far).
Expendables 3 is non-stop action, spelled with brief bits of
Feelings and quick frames of Other Things That Make Badasses Cool, such
as riding motorcycles and doing shots. The Expendables get that the
action is probably why you came, though, and they see to it you get your
money's worth.
Daring vehicular stunts, massive weapons, and
nicely-choreographed hand-to-hand combat occupy most of the screen time.
As always, the cast is a who's who of action stars: Sylvester Stallone,
Jason Statham, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dolph Lundgren, Wesley Snipes,
Terry Crews, Randy Couture, and Jet Li. Throw in Mel Gibson, Kelsey
Grammer, Antonio Banderas, and Harrison Ford for good measure, and
you've got yourself quite the crew.
The pitfall of a cast this size is
that there's never quite enough of THAT ONE GUY you want to see more of
(in my case, Statham, always), but the silver lining is that Harrison
Ford is...well...Harrison Ford, and Banderas, in top comic form,
completely steals the show. The young'uns are the most forgettable batch
of low-watt never-will-bes this side of a Twilight movie--and I
certainly could have done without the addition of a female
Expendable--but the big guns thankfully have enough star power to go
around. Though there was quite a fuss about keeping this installment
tame enough for a PG13 rating (as opposed to the Rs earned by the first
two Expendables flicks), the film doesn't suffer for it. Quite honestly,
I can't imagine a more fun time at the movies.
The Expendables 3
clocks in at 126 minutes and is rated PG13 for "violence including
intense sustained gun battles and fight scenes, and for language."
Of
a possible nine Weasleys, The Expendables 3 gets eight. Oh, and Sly,
dahhhling, you don't have to be 30 years younger to come knockin' on MY
door.
Until next time..
Shut up and take my money!
