At the Movies with General Havoc

[rhoenix]

Oh, it's fairly easy to make an ad-lib Cards Against Humanity formula for the good Mr. Moore.

*ahem*

"Alan Moore decided that he would equate _________ with _________, for which he will be rightfully sued for hyperbole."

[General Havoc]

I've literally had people accuse me of oppressing powerless minorities by going to eat at ethnic restaurants before. If you're bound and determined to take offense with someone, you can push this shit to endless extremes.

[Lys]

That must have been a fun conversation.

[General Havoc]

Guardians of the Galaxy

Alternate Title: Your Move, DC

One sentence synopsis: A human outlaw, an assassin, a literal-minded warrior, a genetically-engineered raccoon, and a sentient tree team up to save the galaxy from a raging, genocidal maniac in search of a superweapon.


Things Havoc liked: Do I even need to recap the Marvel films now? This is the tenth film in the Marvel cinematic universe, seven of which (counting this one) I have now reviewed, and if there's anybody left who doesn't know what this madcap insanity project that Marvel has been on for the last six years is, then they need to go find someone else to tell them about it. Ten films and more to come, and the only question remaining here was whether or not Marvel, having maintained their momentum through a series longer than the great run Pixar had in the late '00s, or either of Disney's masterpiece periods, or even those of Ridley Scott or James Cameron, could possibly do it again, this time with a series and a concept so insane I thought they'd lost their minds when I first heard about the film.

Well of course they did. Who the hell do you think this is? Warner Brothers?

Guardians of the Galaxy rocks. It is a fun, explosive, irreverent space-opera, that proves, yet again, that Marvel seems to be incapable of doing wrong. Taking a series of characters I know nothing about, and shoving them into a film that seems to be comprised of equal parts Star Wars and Galaxy Quest, this film is the cherry atop Marvel's sundae of never-ending success that has attended their entire "Phase 2" output, and if it is not the best Marvel film of this year, that is simply because Winter Soldier was one of the best Marvel films of all time, and this one "only" manages to give it a run for its money.

Part of the secret to Marvel's success throughout these films (other than the pacts with Satan) has been the quality of the crews they have assembled to produce them. It's not merely that the films have had excellent writers and directors, but that each film has been painstakingly paired with a production team tailor-made to do the type of film that Marvel had in mind to do. So it was that the original Thor somehow managed to kidnap and drug Kenneth Branaugh into directing it, Iron Man was the work of snark-and slice-of-life master Jon Favreau, Arrested Development and Community's Russo Brothers were brought in to modernize Captain America, and writers-director Joss Whedon was handed the reins when it came time to do the big ensemble piece in Avengers. For Guardians, Marvel called an audible, pulling in Indie Director James Gunn to take on the writing and directing duties in his first big-budget effort. Gunn was a weird pick for a film that would appear to demand someone with hardcore science-fantasy chops (John Carpenter, J.J. Abrams, or Matt Reeves all come to mind), and yet what Marvel wanted here was not a traditional Space Opera feel, but a much more indie-take on big-budget scifi. And Gunn, whose credits include Super, Slither, and Dawn of the Dead, somehow came up this time with a script and a film that is simultaneously everything and nothing like the films it is aping. The movie is riotously funny, even with the central conceit of the characters not being taken remotely seriously despite their pretensions of awesomeness having been spoiled by the trailers. Banter between the characters, each of which is immediately given their own style and archetype of speech, meets anything to be found in the Avengers, while the design, look, and feel of the film is distinctive and colorful, as befits a space opera and yet recognizably Marvel-esque, as befits the series. I've not been a big fan of Gunn's before this, despite all the critics who rave about his potential, but Gunn has now finally made good in all the right ways, and I can't praise his efforts enough.

But what of these characters, about whom, for the first time in the history of the Marvel franchise, I knew practically nothing going in. To my astonishment, every one of them is not only characterized well, despite this really being a five-way origin story, but portrayed expertly by whatever combination of actors and animators were involved. Starlord, AKA Peter Quill (the movie insists on calling him Quill throughout, despite his best, hopeless efforts) is played by Moneyball's Chris Pratt like a cross between Han Solo and Marty McFly, a hopelessly immature child of the 80s (his music obsessions are amazing) who was kidnapped by space aliens at the age of about eight, and seems to have taken the opportunity to become every eight-year-old's vision of what a wisecracking space outlaw is supposed to be. I've never had occasion to like or dislike Pratt before this, but he is amazing in this role, as perfectly cast as Chris Evans or Chris Hemsworth were for their respective Marvel characters. Only slightly less amazing is Zoe Saldana, of the new Star Trek among other things, who plays cold-eyed assassin Gamora. Her character has the unenviable role of playing the brooding badass in a movie that slathers liberal ridicule upon the concept of brooding badass, but she pulls it off mostly by heaping unending ridicule right back on everyone else. The only shaky element among the live-action cast is WWE wrestler Dave Bautista, who despite his turn in Riddick is plainly not a professional actor. And yet here, the writing comes to the rescue, as his character of Drax the Destroyer is of a race of beings who lack a concept of metaphor, and speak in absolutely literal terms at all times. That's right, they took the fact that Drax was being played by a wrestler without acting experience, whose lines would therefore sound stilted and unnatural, and wrote it into the script. Those beautiful bastards.

But the CG characters are the ones that really steal the show, a duo that should not, under any circumstances have worked, and yet. Rocket Raccoon, a contemporary of Bucky O'Hare, one of the most ludicrous concepts that even Marvel's comic line has to offer, is by far and away my favorite character of the entire film. An anthropomorphic, genetically and cybernetically-enhanced raccoon voiced by Bradley Freaking Cooper of all people, this character is awesome itself. A foot and a half tall gun-fanatic who spends most of his time either blowing shit up, piloting warships what blow shit up, or serving as the dry, comic wit of the entire group preparatory to blowing shit up. A sequence halfway through the film has Rocket get drunk and belligerent, only to be talked down by Starlord into a puddle of tears, and just as we fear that a dreaded "narrate your own backstory" scene is about to raise its head, he responds to his crushing depression by whipping out an assault rifle larger than he is and preparing to, you guessed it, blow more shit up. Rocket is done perfectly, riding the line between Joe Pesci and the Voice of Reason, and surprisingly enough, may actually be the character with the most face-time in the entire thing. But just as amazing is Groot, Vin Diesel's turn as a walking tree, whose limitted vocabulary belies rather surprising depth. Supposedly Diesel demanded that the writers translate all of his dialogue into English so that he could put the exact right tone on the... Grootish... version. It shows. Groot is the perfect counterpart for Rocket and for all the others, and if baby-dancing-Groot does not become a toy line, then someone at Marvel will have lost their damn mind.

On and on I could go, from the side-characters and cameos to the soundtrack. Lee Pace, Thranduil himself, having decided that his turn in the Hobbit was insufficiently campy, plays Ronan the Accuser in the best traditions of Ming the Merciless. So over-the-top that he winds up screaming defiant villain-speech at his own boss (when you're out-scenery-chewing Thanos, you're doing quite a thing), his character is the perfect foil for our completely nonchalant heroes, and the moments when they manage to flat out confuse the hell out of him are priceless. Michael Rooker, one of the finest character actors of all time, gets to hick it up as Yondu, Starlord's abductor/enemy/ally/father figure/pain in the ass (it's that kind of film). This is a man who once played himself in a call of duty game. He's right at home here. Smaller roles go to Djimon Honsou (who reportedly demanded a role in a Marvel film because he felt there were insufficient black characters), Glenn Close (who manages to do better than Judy Dench did in the Riddick series), John C. Reilly (not as annoying as he customarily is), and, of course, Benicio del Toro, who plays some kind of deranged outer-space Liberace with the aplomb I have come to expect from him. I don't usually mention cameos in these things, but this movie is STOCKED with them, from the obligatory Stan Lee appearance to momentary spots by Nathan Fillion, Josh Brolin, Seth Green, and Rob Zombie, all atop a pile of in-jokes and nerd-references that should keep the internet buzzing for weeks.


Things Havoc disliked: I'm sure Marvel will tell you that they knew this movie was going to be a hit from the get-go, and that nobody was nervous in the slightest about this thing, but that would almost certainly be a lie, as I think most of us are well aware, and in fact that's something of the problem this time around. The movie is well-structured and well-written... except when the Gunn's nerve fails, and he suddenly feels the need to explain to the audience what they have just witnessed. There are several points, riven throughout the film, where sentiment or concepts that are perfectly clear to the audience are ruined by the script deciding that a character needs to spell the obvious out, just in case the audience fails to get beaten over the head sufficiently with the standard Marvel themes of "friendship and teamwork conquers all". Several of these incidents hit at absolutely the worst possible moment, spoiling, among other things, one of the bigger dramatic payoffs of the film. This tendency annoyed me more than my viewing companions, but given that the Marvel films are famous for, among other things, the quality of their scripts, it was a serious disappointment.

There's also the issue of sequel-bait. We've all come to expect and accept that the Marvel films, contained within their own universe like episode of a TV show, will continue on and on, but the sequel-baiting for this film is clunky in the extreme. Not only are obvious plot hooks for the next film dragged up out of nowhere in the last ten minutes of runtime (never a good way to do things), but the same problem as before afflicts even the sequel-baiting, meaning that the hooks in question are dragged up many times, each time out of nothing whatsoever. It's awkward and ugly, and mars a film that otherwise is none of these things.


Final Thoughts: DC Comics has had a rough time of things at the movies in the last few years. Not only have they put out half of the raw output that Marvel has, but their offerings have been mixed in tone and quality, and lacked utterly the cohesiveness that is Marvel's towering cinematic universe. DC's poverty of imagination in realizing its properties on film has been palpable, and this is coming from someone who liked both Dark Knight Rises and Man of Steel. The best point of comparison from DC for this movie is likely 2011's Green Lantern, another high-concept space opera film that misfired drastically in every way that this movie aims true. And yet the point isn't so much that that movie was mediocre while this one was excellent, but that DC, having failed to do a space opera properly, retrenched themselves in the old-standbys of Superman and Batman, and will be doing so yet again in 2016 (having pushed the release date back from their original 2015 opening). In response to questions about greater diversity of characters, a Wonder Woman film perhaps, or simply anything not done by the Zack Snyder/Chris Nolan combo, DC has made many excuses, including that audiences were not ready for such things, and that the risks of doing anything but what worked in 1973 are too great. Marvel, meanwhile, just finished making a space opera about a raccoon and a walking tree, one of such qualities that I was forced to praise it immodestly, explicitly torpedoing every excuse DC has made or will make in the future regarding what is and is not possible in comic book films.

A day may come, must come, friends, when the skill of Marvel fails. When they forsake care and break all standards of quality, in favor of the mediocre and the stupid. An hour of laments, and shattered dreams, when the age of Marvel comes crashing down around us, when they revert, at last, to the mean, and go the route of Pixar or Michael Bay.

But it is not this day. This day we watch Guardians of the Galaxy. This day, we get to smile.

Final Score: 8/10

[LadyTevar]

an 8?!??! YOU ONLY GAVE IT AN 8!!!!!!!!!!!!
BLASPHEMY! GET THE TORCHES!!

[Steve]

An 8 from GenHav usually feels like a 9 or 9.5 from other reviewers, in my experience.

[General Havoc]

An 8 from GenHav usually feels like a 9 or 9.5 from other reviewers, in my experience.

The film had flaws, ones I spoke to, and movies at the top end of the scale have exacting standards. I have, in a hundred and fifty films, given out exactly FOUR 9-scores, one of which managed a 9.5. Guardains did not meet the standards of those four films, but it was an excellent movie. I have therefore graded it appropriately.

[Steve]

Exactly my point.

Although seeing your review and that of others sometimes makes me wonder how the minds of other critics work who hate the very things that make the movie work. For instance:

Kyle Smith of the New York Post: "Guardians of the Galaxy brings to mind some of the most unforgettable sci-fi event movies of the last 30 years. Alas, those films are Howard the Duck and Green Lantern."

Everything is subjective so attacking critics for saying things like this is probably a bit too far, but it does make me wonder how a mind compares the drivel of Howard or the wasted promise of Green Lantern to this movie, which delivers on everything it promises.

[General Havoc]

Exactly my point.

Although seeing your review and that of others sometimes makes me wonder how the minds of other critics work who hate the very things that make the movie work. For instance:

Kyle Smith of the New York Post: "Guardians of the Galaxy brings to mind some of the most unforgettable sci-fi event movies of the last 30 years. Alas, those films are Howard the Duck and Green Lantern."

Everything is subjective so attacking critics for saying things like this is probably a bit too far, but it does make me wonder how a mind compares the drivel of Howard or the wasted promise of Green Lantern to this movie, which delivers on everything it promises.

Fuck that. Critics who publish their opinions publically do not get to hide behind the "everything is subjective" line when taken to task for their bad opinions. I stood up behind my adoration of Suckerpunch (and my hatred of Tron Legacy), and they can too.

This movie resembles Howard the Duck in that (spoiler alert) he makes an appearance. That's it. Green Lantern is a much more reasonable point of comparison as it was another space-opera big-budget comic book film, but that comparison was valid only in that it contrasts the flaws of Green Lantern to the success of Guardians.

[Lys]

God reading Kyle Smith's vapid, shallow review makes me appreciate all the effort Havoc puts into his own. All I really got out of it is, "I didn't get the movie and the jokes weren't funny, so it's a terrible failure." The best part is him closing the review by recounting one of the film's supposedly cringe worthy jokes, only I laughed because it's actually pretty funny.

[Hotfoot]

From my parents:

"Oh we liked it, but the review we saw gave it 3.5/4 stars, we'd give it just 3. We just couldn't follow what was going on with the plot."

I love my parents, but man alive. Do you see? DO YOU SEE?

[frigidmagi]

Do your parents only pay attention to half the movie or something Cam? Because while I love Guardians... It's not a complex or even all that deep a plot. This shiney! This bad guy! No let bad guy have shiney!

That was about oh 70? 80% of the plot?

As for the bad reviews... I honestly think this is a way of determining who is fundamentally out of touch now. The one negative review I saw on metacritic, called it a children's movie and couldn't understand why he had been sent to see it.

[Josh]

You can never take a negative review at face value these days. You have guys who'll do 'em just as clickbait, and you have people who'll do them just to be contrarian. Welcome to the internet age of discourse.

[rhoenix]

Now I'm just waiting for someone to give it a bad review, you know, for irony.

[Josh]

Some people can just disagree. Me, I hated X-Men First Class and have no interested anticipation for any sequels. But I don't write internet reviews and I have no interest in big subjective arguments about why this movie was good or that one was bad. I am also not getting paid for my opinions, so meh.

[General Havoc]

Some people can just disagree. Me, I hated X-Men First Class and have no interested anticipation for any sequels. But I don't write internet reviews and I have no interest in big subjective arguments about why this movie was good or that one was bad. I am also not getting paid for my opinions, so meh.

And what? I am?

I do write internet reviews. and I give my opinion to those who want it. Those who do not have interest in subjective arguments about the good or bad qualities of movies are welcome to take what they will, but this is a thread about such subjective opinions. If you want people to stop arguing movies, there are many other threads for your pleasure...

[Josh]

Defensive much? You got your thing and I got mine and as you'll notice I don't come stomping in here to argue with your reviews because as I said I'm not interested in it. If that floats your boat, enjoy.

[Hotfoot]

Do your parents only pay attention to half the movie or something Cam? Because while I love Guardians... It's not a complex or even all that deep a plot. This shiney! This bad guy! No let bad guy have shiney!

That was about oh 70? 80% of the plot?

You see now what I'm dealing with here. I suspect my Dad sleeps through half the movies these days, I don't know.

[frigidmagi]

Some people can just disagree. Me, I hated X-Men First Class and have no interested anticipation for any sequels. But I don't write internet reviews and I have no interest in big subjective arguments about why this movie was good or that one was bad. I am also not getting paid for my opinions, so meh.

Defensive much? You got your thing and I got mine and as you'll notice I don't come stomping in here to argue with your reviews because as I said I'm not interested in it. If that floats your boat, enjoy.

Josh, you kinda did. Look, if you think there's no point in arguing about film opinions that's cool. But if that's the case, don't come into a thread about arguing about film opinions and grandly declare there's no point to the conservation... Come on man.

[Josh]

I was specifically referring to the guy who wrote the controversial review and not this thread and honestly it straight up did not occur to me that anybody would take it for this thread until afterward. But on the internet we don't get clarity on statements that people say, we immediately get butthurt and defensive or break out colored font which is honestly fucking lame.

Whatever, I won't bother with this thread again.

[Steve]

Looking at the box office receipts.... I love how GotG has had its number of screens greatly lowered, yet it still came in second place this weekend despite the opening of three new movies that included Expendables, and was only 3.4 million or so short of TMNT, which was shown on more screens.

Totally awesome if you ask me.

[General Havoc]

If we're done trolling in here...

A Most Wanted Man

Alternate Title: Bait and Switch

A note before we begin: This review contains spoilers. There was little option but to employ them given the issues that arose.

One sentence synopsis: The head of a secret German counter-terrorism team tries to entrap a terrorist financier by manipulating a Chechen refugee and his lawyer.


Things Havoc liked: Phillip Seymour Hoffman's passing earlier this year caught him in the midst of his customary massive workload, allowing us the next year or so to watch him in the various films that were still under production when he died. I've contrived to miss a number of these, boring indie fare as they seemed to be, but this one I was interested in, as John le Carré spy thrillers have a decent pedigree on film, and the subject of this one looked particularly interesting. Hoffman plays Günther Bachmann, a dumpy, middle-aged spy, as are basically all of le Carré's protagonists, head of a secret group of clandestine bagmen tasked with penetrating networks of terrorist cells both domestically in Hamburg and elsewhere. As anyone who has ever seen a John le Carré film or read a book of his can tell you, Hoffman was made to play a leading role in one of his books. Wandering about in a perpetual half-stooped slouch, Hoffman looks like nothing but another governmental middle manager of the type that seems to grace all the bureaucracies of Europe (and elsewhere). His character almost never raises his voice, doesn't scream or chase people, not even in the midst of enhanced interrogations, and looks ill-at-ease when called upon to report to formal superiors. His techniques rely on patience and surveillance, turning one asset after another to exert pressure against the next one. The skill with which he manipulates people caught in compromising circumstances is impressive, and by the end of the film, when four people are in a room discussing crime, three of whom are actually working for Hoffman, it all seems perfectly natural.

But Hoffman's merely one of many in this cast. Rachel McAdams, an actress I have successfully avoided up until now, actually does a fine turn as Annabelle Richter, a young immigration lawyer who allows ignorance and idealism to drag her way too far into a case she does not understand the particulars of. Watching her squirm as Hoffman plays her like a violin is exquisite, but not as exquisite as Willem Defoe, one of the weirdest men in Hollywood, here playing perhaps the most normal character he has ever touched, a bank manager whose father was involved in unscrupulous business, and who must do what he can to cover himself and his institution against liability and governmental interference. Iranian veteran actor Homayoun Ershadi, of Zero Dark Thirty and Agora, plays Dr. Faisal Abdullah, a seemingly-pro-Western Arab of means and influence whose secret funneling of money towards terrorist cells touches all of this off, his character only ever betraying bare hints of what he must actually be plotting. But the best of the bunch is unquestionably unknown Russian actor Grigoriy Dobrygin, whose character Issa is a scarred, skittish, half-Chechen trauma victim, who seems to be up to no good when we first see him, and only slowly do we realize is nothing but a scarred, broken refugee, scared and confused by his surroundings. The film plays a brilliant game with this character, using shot construction and expression to give us Westerners the unmistakable impression that we are looking at a Terrorist, only to pull the rug out from under us when he proves interested in nothing of the sort.

If I sound like I'm just reciting actors and their roles though, bear in mind that this film basically IS the actors and their roles, and the situations that such characters are inevitably going to be placed in by virtue of being around one another. We watch as Hoffman watches, as the characters are slowly ensnared in his web, turning them one by one into "assets" to be employed in the furtherance of his cause. And what is that cause? Not the destruction of his enemies nor the death of the aforementioned people, but information. We see Hoffman and his coterie use the Lawyer to get to the Banker, the Banker to get to the Doctor, and the Doctor to go on and get to others, penetrating further and further along until he can reach the actual source of the evil he seeks to fight. Along the way, as best he can, Hoffman does try to do his best for his assets, if nothing else because a carrot and a stick have more persuasive power than the stick alone. The Lawyer wants her client given refugee status. The Banker wants to have his past unexamined by society at large, and as these are things that are secondary to Hoffman's goal, he can get them in furtherance of it. Le Carré's stories are usually like this, procedural spy thrillers that eschew the Bond-esque escapades for realistic investigations on just how intelligence work is properly done.


Things Havoc disliked: The problem though, is that this is not the only thing that le Carré's stories are usually like. And here's where we unavoidably get to the spoilers, because one of le Carré's other conceits, from as far back as The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, is that everything to do with the United States is evil.

I mentioned spoilers above. I'm serious.

No, I'm not trying to turn this into another nationalist screed. I'm well aware of US intelligence's less-than-spotless record when it comes to the work we have done, both in the Cold War and the War on Terror. But there's a difference between wishing to point out the CIA's failings, and being obsessed by them. Zero Dark Thirty did the former, showing enhanced interrogations, unapologetically, and showing that they were useless wastes of time and effort to torture undeserving people for no gain. But this film has nothing whatsoever to do with the CIA, save only for the character of Martha Sullivan, the German Station Chief for the CIA played by Robin Wright. Initially this character is somewhat mysterious, as she appears only once in a while, and there mostly to bring up backstory about the main character and bounce ideas off of him, as well as provide the audience with some sense of the ticking clock going on back in Berlin. Fair enough. But in the last ten minutes of the film, this character suddenly morphs into Snidely Whiplash, who swoops in to wreck the operation, beat up everyone with goons, kidnap and destroy people's lives, and all for no conceivable gain whatsoever.

It would be one thing if this trainwreck were the product of ignorance, mistakes, or other elements established somewhere in the film, but it's not. It's instead the inverted equivalent of a Deus Ex Machina, wherein an outside element not previously established suddenly shows up in the middle of nowhere to ruin everything, irrespective of what any of the characters have and have not done up until this point. And why is this somehow an acceptable thing to throw into a movie that had been so scrupulously realistic until this point? Because the element in question is the CIA, and the CIA is axiomatically evil. They need no establishment, no motivation, no background, no characterization, nothing. To le Carré and his filmmakers they may as well be the Nazis, a plot device assumed by all to be evil without need for any such detail-work. A film interested in showing off the ways in which the CIA interferes with domestic intelligence would be one thing, as would one where the interplay between Hoffman and Wright led them to this state. This film however, is so intent on ensuring that the CIA gets mud thrown in their eye, that ultimately, the film would rather do that than actually tell its story, and literally breaks the entire narrative just so that they can make a cheap, smug point about how dumb, stupid, and recklessly evil the Americans are. So evil, in fact, that there's no need to even establish them as so. Their nationality does that well enough. The movie goes on as normal until an evil American who has nothing to do with anything suddenly destroys everything, and then it is over. Curtain up. Credits roll.


Final Thoughts: I don't hate this film. Indeed I quite liked this film up until the very end. What I hate is the underlying assumption behind it, that the need for ideological pie-throwing in the direction of the CIA is sufficient, by itself, to absolve the film from actually telling its story. It's as though le Carré, or Dutch director Anton Corbijn (whose last film, "The American", also suffered from this defect), feel that all they need do is stand on stage and say "Americans, AMIRITE?!" in order to get independent or European film critics to praise his daring exposure of the corruption that lies in the heart of those barbaric cretins from across the ocean. That said, as I once mentioned to a friend of mine whose hatred for a failed ending on an excellent video game was getting the best of him, a film that does everything right except for five minutes of its runtime is still a good film, even if it picks the worst possible five minutes to screw everything up in.

A few years back, I reviewed le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, a film that I thought was highly confusing and erratic, albeit good despite. This film is considerably clearer than that one was, but all that managed to reveal is that sometimes an author's proclivities are best left opaque.

Final Score: 6/10

[General Havoc]

The Expendables 3

Alternate Title: The Dying of the Light

One sentence synopsis: A group of elite mercenaries must defeat the private army of an arms-dealing madman who once helped found their organization.


Things Havoc liked: There's a certain innocence to the Expendables project, a series of films that cobbles together all the great action stars of yesteryear for one massive blockbuster extravaganza. Seeing all of the greats from the 80s and 90s and today mashed into one film under the flimsiest of pretexts for the purposes of action, action, action, is exactly the sort of thing I go to the movies to see. And since damned few people are willing to go with me to see Indie flicks anymore (despite my assurances that we probably won't wind up sucked back into the temporal vortex of Under the Skin), once in a while it's good to drag everyone into a big-time film that the whole family can enjoy.

Once again, the Expendables are back, with Sylvester Stallone and Jason Statham and Dolph Lungren and Terry Crews and Randy Couture shooting, hacking, and blasting it up in the accustomed manner, and as before, with a host of new classic action stars added in, along with some newcomers of unproven talent. As with the last film, which included Jean-Claude Van Damme as a scenery-chewing camp villain and Chuck Norris as a Sergio-Leone-style man-with-no-name whose appearances were complete with theme music, the new additions of classic stars are the best things in the film. Wesley Snipes, a man I've not seen since he was arrested and jailed for Tax Evasion some time ago, plays, appropriately enough, a psychotic escaped convict whose performance seems like an over-inflated pastiche of his classic turns in movies like New Jack City or Passenger 57. Harrison Ford, who starred in many action movies in his day, but different ones, takes on the role of a stern CIA chief-turned Helicopter pilot with the gruff, seen-it-all grumpiness that he has so often used as a replacement for giving a damn turned up another five notches. Better still is Antonio Banderas, an actor I can never see enough of, who this time is playing a hyperkenetic over-talkative wannabe ladies' man whose desperation and patheticness is clearly visible. Banderas is incredibly awesome in this movie, slaughtering hordes of faceless mooks in what looks like rapturous glee at having been allowed to come along on the adventure, striking exactly the right note for a film like this one.

But the best thing about this movie, unquestionably, is Mel Gibson, who may be insane, but whom we should not ever forget is a talented and immensely entertaining actor. Since his well-publicized foibles in the news and tabloids, Gibson has taken to playing camp, scenery-chewing villains in various movies, including the otherwise underwhelming Machete Kills. Here he doubles down, playing a ranting, screaming, maniacal mercenary arms-dealer who, of course, has personal history with the Expendables and intends to see it resolved violently and through the most ridiculous manner possible. This is clearly an excuse for Mel to play a Bond villain, but that's not exactly a bad idea, as GIbson's strong point has always been playing characters on the edge of psychotic breaks (Lethal Weapon, Braveheart, Mad Max). That he does the same thing here in a movie designed to be over the top and absurd is precisely the correct choice.



Things Havoc disliked: Unfortunately, it's nearly the only one.

Let's get this out of the way right now, the Expendables is the male equivalent of a chick flick, a film series designed to appeal to the nostalgia primarily of adult men (and some women, I suppose) who remember the glory days of pure action movies in the 80s and early 90s and wish to revisit such things along with the icons of the day. They have, up until this point, satisfactorily aped the conventions, foibles, tropes, and feel of these films of yesteryear, in no small part because they were made by the same men responsible for the above matters. And yet whether because the success of the previous two installments went to Stallone's head or because someone else interfered, this time round, the filmmakers decided they had to "modernize" things, not merely with a new cast (we'll get there), but by making the movie PG-13.

Yes that's right, The Expendables 3 is PG-freaking-13, something I had considered so unthinkable I didn't even bother to check ahead of time. And like the tired Die Hard movie sequels of the past decade, the result of this is to completely neuter a film series whose entire purpose for existing is to be completely over-the-top and absurd. No blood. No cursing. No moments of "Oooooooh" as a villain is dispatched in a particularly inventive manner, in short no artistry whatsoever is permitted to enter this film, and if you dare respond to me that artistry is impossible in an action movie, I will never let you read one of my reviews again. The film feels castrated without its R rating, eschewing all of the elements that made the first movie good and the second one very good in favor of tired dialogue, boring exposition, bad acting, and lazy stuntwork. There are simply only so many times that you can watch the heroes shooting bloodless mooks from long range without becoming bored, which is the whole reason why the classic action movies existed in the first place.

Oh and speaking of the above dialogue, exposition, and acting, I give you the "new" generation of Expendables, shoehorned into the plot for reasons so stupid that I won't recount them here. With ONE exception, all of these people are both entirely unknown, being drawn variously from the UFC (which at least makes sense) to the stars of romantic teen dramas and even cast members from Twilight, and with that same one exception every one of them is WRETCHED. It's not that they're wooden and unable to emote, that's a requirement to get into this film after all, but it's that they don't know how to recite bad dialogue well, which like it or not, was always a strong suit for the action stars of the 80s and 90s. Particularly bad honors go to Rhonda Rousey, an MMA champion in her first role who, based on this performance, has a long career ahead of her as an MMA champion. She may actually be the worst actress I've ever seen, but reflecting on that list is likely to lead to madness, so let's leave it at that. Rousy however can at least walk the necessary walk. Kellan Lutz, of freaking Twilight, can neither act nor fight, and is so bland that I forgot which character he was supposed to be playing. The rest of them are also unremittingly awful, save only for the slight exception of, of all people, championship Welterweight boxer David Ortiz, whose performance and fighting skills are actually about on par with that of the rest of the cast. It's not that Ortiz is a good actor, mind you, but he knows at least how to act well in a bad movie, and be entertaining. Action careers have been made on less than this.

But there are simply no action careers to be made here, for this film is simply incompetent. After a pair of reasonably interesting action sequences on a train and in Mogadishu (?), the film applies the brakes for about an hour as Kelsey Grammar (?!?) shows up for an extended "let's go recruit the team" sequence. Grammar has no action credentials behind him, but he does a fine job and is not the problem. The problem is that the movie seems to want to pack ALL the action into a single ludicrous fight scene at the end of the film, which would be at least a defensible choice if we weren't all half-asleep by that point. And when the action comes, it is boring. Waves of mooks, each unable to shoot straight to save their lives, which I recognize to be a staple of the genre but not to this extent and not to this length. This isn't over-the-top, this is a parody of over-the-top action, until we enter what I call "XXX" territory, wherein characters start doing stunts and "radical" things not because it makes any sense in the fight, nor even because it looks awesome, but because it will provide a nice trailer shot. Without recourse to the creative freedom offered by an R-rating, this film is therefore reduced to spending damn near an hour-long action fight just watching our heroes mow waves of soldiers down with automatic weapons with the occasional grenade thrown in to liven things up. How Stallone, who made the originals and dozens of other action films in his day, could possibly have produced something this boring, this bland, this tired from his once-vibrant franchise boggles the mind.


Final Thoughts: I assume that nobody is shocked to learn that Expendables 3 is a bad movie. I wasn't. But what astonishes me is how tired it is, how unlike its predecessors, how brittle the fun and hollow the laughter is that it engenders. Coming at the tail end of a series of action films I was highly eager to see, this movie is a shattering disappointment, and may, I fear, draw closed the last moments of the era of the great Action movie. A failure like this cannot help but make me nostalgic for the loss of such a titanic genre, in the way that other critics lamented the death of the Western, for this film, moreso even than such futile efforts as Escape Plan or Machete Kills, indicates to me that this genre, at long last, may be finally dead.

But then, movie genres have their day, as directors and actors do. And if we have lost the action film of yesteryear, perhaps it was only to replace it with the Superhero film of today. The tastes and whim of Hollywood evolve, and leave us with new sights and memories of the old. Perhaps it's simply time to let this genre go, and look to what lies ahead. Perhaps next time, when Stallone or Schwarzenegger or whoever else declares they're going to beat on, paddling against the tide, in some effort to recapture the spirit of a bygone age, it might serve us better to curl up in a chair at home, pop in Aliens or Rambo or Terminator 2, and as Fitzgerald would put it, bear ourselves back ceaselessly into the past.

Final Score: 4/10

[Steve]

I thought it said a lot when the movie failed to even be the highest grossing new movie of its weekend, falling behind a comedy movie while GotG and TMNT took top nods (TMNT was top, barely, and I am amused how Guardians is now tops at the box office yet again, even if it's the late summer/early fall doldrums before the Holiday Season flicks).

[General Havoc]

Yeah, with school back in session, Blockbuster season is officially over, which means I'm in for a dry spell before Oscar season gets rolling in October.