The Expend­ables 3

The entire career of actor and direc­tor Sylvester Stal­lone has been based on the notion that he’s a man out of time. Actu­al­ly, it’s not that. It’s more an illog­i­cal­ly staunch belief that he’s a man in time, and it’s the rest of the world that’s out of synch. While fash­ion and tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment dic­tate that the future is a place of implaca­ble sheen and life-improv­ing giz­moids, Sly opts to remain in (or, at least, be a walk­ing pro­mo­tion of) a state of full-bore macho retardation.

He projects him­self as the kind of bur­ley work-shirt man­nequin who com­pletes banal house­hold tasks with an over-sized Bowie knife. While you’re sat there depth-charg­ing gua­va smooth­ies and in your cosy state-fund­ed arts retreat, Sly’s splash­ing back boil­er­mak­ers and switch­ing the plat­ters on the juke­box with the butt of a .44 Mag­num. And don’t be fooled by that badass hip-flask — it prob­a­bly con­tains milky tea.

So, it comes as lit­tle sur­prise that The Expend­ables 3 is yet anoth­er iter­a­tion of this fer­vent creed, even down to the fact that its title rejects a fash­ion­able, colon-based suf­fix. Boast­ing a bloat­ed cast list which harks back to the ensem­ble dis­as­ter movies of the ​’70s, the film, as with the pre­vi­ous two entries, is an act of unal­loyed nos­tal­gia, from its ultra-schemat­ic plot and stock action loca­tions (dock yard, hotel, art gallery) to char­ac­ters with a predilec­tion for vio­lence and scenes which are con­nect­ed via trav­el in a refur­bished, pro­peller-dri­ven war plane.

The job of the crit­ic is ren­dered all-but moot by a film like this. You don’t require words writ­ten on a dig­i­tal page to know how such a movie plays out. It’s best to sim­ply free-asso­ciate — think of Ronald Reagan’s flam­ing ghost fir­ing a RPG into an Apple store. Or the song ​‘Free Bird’ play­ing while a tum­ble­down nurs­ing home is coat­ed with non-reg­u­la­tion motor oil. Or just an end­less mon­tage of Gold­en Eagle steaks siz­zling on a bar­be­cue while an elder­ly ex-ser­vice­man (hon­ourably dis­charged) says the word ​“Amer­i­ca” ad infini­tum while cry­ing. Why inno­vate when every­thing is already there for the taking?

And yet, even though this third film has noth­ing at all new to add to the con­ver­sa­tion (is there a movie fran­chise in his­to­ry whose episodes are as indis­tinct as this?), The Expend­ables 3 still some­how man­ages to be the strongest in the series film thus far. Cinema’s abil­i­ty to enhance and roman­ti­cise real­i­ty is used to its fullest, from a quaint sequence which sees Stal­lone sprint­ing across a rooftop, to a new gen­er­a­tion of young Expend­ables doing awk­ward, hasti­ly-learned karaōke along to Neil Young’s ​‘Old Man’ in a blues bar. The sole change from its fore­bears is that Sly’s direc­tor avatar, Patrick Hugh­es, has opt­ed to dial back the gore quo­tient in order to deliv­er the geri­atric der­ring do of the Expend­ables to an audi­ence of impres­sion­able 12-year olds.

It’s a wise tac­tic, and for a num­ber of rea­sons. First­ly, despite the strin­gent dic­tates of the cen­sors, the films to which The Expend­ables 3 makes ref­er­ence (Cobra, Pas­sen­ger 57, Preda­tor, Twins, Com­man­do, The Ter­mi­na­tor, etc) will all be sta­ples of the juve­nile (male) view­er. Sec­ond­ly, this film is entire­ly blood­less, so you get all the action and none of the vio­lence. Per­haps, moral­ly, it would be a more hon­est ges­ture to show the bloody upshot of when tooled-up pan-Euro­pean hench­men march onto the screen to be mechan­i­cal­ly cut down by gunfire.

Yet, in avoid­ing all that gory faff, it means the Hugh­es can con­cen­trate more on the chore­og­ra­phy of the fights and is forced to think where the cam­era is in rela­tion to the bod­ies he’s film­ing. In many ways this film is just as vio­lent as the first two, but the lack of blood means that it can bob through some out­mod­ed cen­sor­ship loop­holes. Its only gam­ble is that the 12-year-olds them­selves may feel cheat­ed by the lack of splat, hav­ing already been con­di­tioned on the first two features.

It’s a tri­umphant­ly right-wing film, and there’s no real rea­son for left­ies to get upset by some of its more out­ré beliefs — Stallone’s films always appear to pro­mote the idea that law courts are a sham and that jus­tice needs to be tak­en into the (gun-weild­ing) hands of the peo­ple. And if its polit­i­cal out­look weren’t forth­right enough, Jet Li is rolled in for the big show­down so as to be the butt of a bunch of jokes about how Asian peo­ple are quite short, plus the final bat­tle takes place in the fic­tion­al coun­try of ​“Ass­man­istan”.

MVPs are Wes­ley Snipes, whose first uttered line is an apolo­gia for his tax eva­sion, and then lat­er Anto­nio Ban­deras, who plays the only char­ac­ter in the entire saga with a dis­cernible and mild­ly eccen­tric char­ac­ter trait. All told, it’s good, clean ret­ro­grade fun.