The Expendables 3 (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Patrick Hughes (Red Hill)
	Actors: Sylvester Stallone (Rocky 1-5, Rambo 1-4), Jason Statham (The Transporter 1-3), Dolph Lundgren (Rocky 4, Universal Soldier 1 3-4), Arnold Schwarzenegger (Terminator 1-3), Wesley Snpies (Blade 1-3), Harrison Ford (Indiana Jones 1-4)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action
	Conditions of visioning: 05.01.2016, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Barney Ross (Stallone) and his team rescue a former member Doctor Death (Snipes) en route to a mission for the government. There they will meet a former foe they thought dead: Stonebanks (Gibson).
Review: After The Expendables and its sequel, I was not extremely motivated but a bit curious to watch this third installment of the franchise started by Stallone in order to re-unite aging action heroes in testosterone-filled movies. And this one is in the line of the two others, only bigger and louder, introducing more established actors like Wesley Snipes and Mel Gibson (after three movies we have pretty much rounded all of them up) and a younger team, paving the way for more movies starting with The Expendables 4 announced for 2017. This new team features in particular the welcome addition of a female member played by martial artist Ronda Rousey. The story is not very original but delivers the action expected by the audience at regular intervals, interleaved with some character development and of course muscle show-offs. I was annoyed throughout the movie (especially at the beginning) by the cheap special effects used very often to show planes or tanks. The fifteen minutes during which Ross is travelling across North America in search for a new team is a bit far-fetched but nicely slows down the pace and definitely reminds of an 80's action classic or a video game. During the whole movie I had the feeling it was trying to beat a record in bodycount and the final half hour confirmed that. It is by far the most exaggerated scenes of the franchise and the death toll is limited only by the amount of dead you can show on film per second! Imagine that it takes place in a decrepit building surrounded by a full army (including tanks and choppers) and our ten men inside show all their talent for killing wave after wave of opponents without getting so much as a scratch. Totally unrealistic but funny to watch. Searching the Internet I could easily find the killcount for the first two movies (respectively 203 and 328 or 221 and 489 depending on the sources) but only one forum has the number for the third one: a whooping 480! The movie nevertheless managed to get a PG-13 rating and not R in the USA because during this whole carnage we don't see a single drop of blood ; people keep on falling under bullets and knifes but they don't bleed. This reminds me very much of what George R. R. Martin (author of the series that were adapted into Games of Thrones) said at the NIFFF2013: that in cinema Action just means bloodless Violence. I have then found a list of the deadliest films of all time by on-screen death counts. It dates from 2013 so The Expendables 3 is not in, but you can see that it would be placed 7th in the top of a list dominated by Fantasy and Historical Peplums.
Rating: 4 /10