The Expendables 3

I've enjoyed both the previous Expendable movies, The Expendables and The Expendables 2, knowing full well they're not particularly good movies. It's the rare franchise where things get better with each progressing flick. Then came the third entry...pretty much panned by critics and not embraced by audiences as much. Well, most of the audience. I happened to love it for all its insane goofiness and over the top everything. Here's 2014's The Expendables 3.

Having rescued a former member of the team from a heavily guarded train, Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone), Lee Christmas (Jason Statham) and the Expendables move onto their next mission, but there is far more awaiting them than they expected. Sent to knock off an international arms dealer, Barney is stunned to find out who the dealer actually is. His name is Conrad Stonebanks (Mel Gibson), a former member of the Expendables and a co-founder of the group with Barney who's long been believed dead after going rogue from the group. The team is all shot up and not in a good place to go after Stonebanks, but Barney wants nothing more than revenge on his former partner turned lunatic enemy. He sees the writing on the wall though and doesn't want to see his fellow mercenaries get killed in the process. Instead of going forward, Barney disbands the group and assembles a younger group of fiery mercenaries looking to prove themselves. Can they get the job done and not get killed in the process?

The first two Expendables movies are far from perfect, but the second one was definitely better than the first. Things were allowed to breathe a little bit and some fun characters were added to the mix. This third entry struggled at the box office, some attributing that to a PG-13 rating instead of an R-rating while others pointed to a bootleg getting a release weeks before the wide release. You know what? WHO CARES?!? These are movies meant for action-hungry fans who love over the top shootouts, a ridiculously cool cast, one-liner one after another, and villains you just love to hate. Nothing groundbreaking for director Patrick Hughes' film, but it is most assuredly not trying to break any new ground. Having written the screenplay for the first two, Stallone again handles that department and doesn't disappoint.

Stallone will never be accused of writing anything Shakespearean or all-time classic, but who the f*** cares? The man knows how to write a good, old-fashioned shoot 'em up, dammit! He tried to accomplish a lot with the first two flicks, but here? Here?!? It's like he challenged himself to amp things up to even more ridiculous levels. Much of the cast returns with quite a few BIG names joining the mix. It's a longer movie than its predecessors (126 minutes) and features a ton of action from the word 'Go.' It isn't a great movie, but 'Expendables' is damn entertaining. I watched it with a smile on my face and thoroughly enjoyed it from beginning to end. All Stallone wants to do is to put something out there that audiences WANT to see, and I love him for it. About as good as a movie like this can get.

The ensemble and action out of this world star power is at an all-time action high, but the guts of the movie remains that men on a mission, mercenary tough guy mindset. It starts of course with Stallone's Barney and Statham's Lee, bitching and moaning at each other like an old married couple. Those scenes provide some good laughs while also offering some background about the history of the Expendables. Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews and Randy Couture are back too with Jet Li only appearing in the final 20 minutes in nothing more than an extended cameo. I still feel like people were surprised by how well the Expendables movies did in theaters. For years before the movies there were rumors of all the 1980s/1990s action stars who were interested in starring only to drop out. Since then, a long list of stars have made appearances leaving Lundgren, Crews, Couture and Li with little to nothing to do. Oh, that Arnold Schwarzenegger fella is around too, chomping on cigars and even yelling "Get to the chopper!" How can you lose with that happening?

So Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme weren't enough, huh? The casting gets taken to crazy levels here. Gibson is a great addition to the series, his Stonebanks a perfectly evil, sinister, growling villain, injecting a ton of energy. I need more! Replacing Bruce Willis, Harrison Ford is an easy cool as Drummer, the team's CIA holder of sorts. Wesley Snipes and Antonio Banderas join the Expendables too because...well, why the hell not?  Both look to be having a lot of fun in parts that let them ham it up some (or for Banderas, A LOT). As for the new, fresh Expendables, there's Kellan Lutz (former Marine, favors a motorcycle), Ronda Rousey (hand-to-hand specialist), Glen Powell (tech) and Victor Ortiz (weapons). The younger group isn't as interesting, but their inclusion to the story is more of a means to an end. Kelsey Grammer plays Bonaparte, Barney's mercenary recruiter, the recruiting scene something right out of The Magnificent Seven or countless other men on a mission movies.   

Look, there's no point in analyzing the action. It's good, but obviously not as bloody or as graphic as an R-rated version would have been. Blood or not, the body count that piles up is downright gratuitous. The finale alone is ridiculous with every action cliche ever invented seemingly on display. Stallone vs. Gibson, thousands of bullets flying, Lutz doing his best Steve McQueen/Great Escape impression, Ford flying overhead in a helicopter with Schwarzenegger as his machine gunner, and that's just the start. As an action fan, it's almost too much....eh, not really. It's awesome and just a blast to watch. From the action to the cast, the mercenaries busting each other and seeing who's the best, the old vs. new school, the great villain, it is a hell of a lot of fun. An easy-going mess of a movie that I loved throughout. Here's a closing thought to process.

Late in the movie, a helicopter is loaded with some of the most iconic action heroes ever. We're talking Rambo/Rocky, Han Solo/Indiana Jones, the Terminator, Blade, the Transporter, Ivan Drago, and Desperado all flying along. Oh, and Braveheart is below chasing after them. It's just too much to take in! Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!

The Expendables 3 (2014): *** 1/2 /****

Chaos

I've got 30-plus movies on my Netflix queue, and I'm....in....a....rut. Last weekend, not one of them burst off the page. I didn't really want to see any of them so I did a sorta-random search and picked a movie. The end result....2005's Chaos, a movie that got an extremely limited theatrical release. Good cast, cool premise? Maybe we've got a rut-buster.

After a hostage standoff goes horribly wrong, Seattle detective Quentin Conners (Jason Statham) is suspended indefinitely from the force while his partner is fired. Just a few months later, Conners is brought back to the force when his supervisor has no other option. A bank is being robbed by five heavily armed gunmen with over 40 hostages taken. The leader of the bank robbers, Lorenz (Wesley Snipes), has demanded to negotiate only with Conners and no one else. Given a young, new partner -- really more of a watchdog -- Shane Dekker (Ryan Phillippe), Conners heads to the bank looking to get the robbers and save the hostages. Nothing goes right though, several hostages injured in an explosion that allows the bank robbers to escape as well. Inside the bank, no money seems to have been taken. What exactly was the purpose of the "robbery"? What did they hope to achieve? Can Conners and Dekker figure it all out?

Yeah, about this one......wow, what a stinker. This is not the rut-buster I was counting on for my Netflix queue. From director Tony Giglio (who also wrote the screenplay), 'Chaos' borrows liberally from a fair amount of like-minded movies about bank robberies and hostages, anything from Swordfish to Inside Man (heavily borrowed), Dog Day Afternoon to Heat and plenty other movies that are far better than this one. It was clearly made on a smaller budget, Canadian locations filling in for Seattle, and generally has the feel of a straight-to-DVD dud. It tries to be something better, something else, but it never creates enough of its own identity and is dead on arrival. 'Chaos' is only 106 minutes long but it drags badly almost immediately and never picks up any momentum.

The formula for cheap action flicks like this is usually cast two or three pretty recognizable actors/stars, get another actor who never quite became a star but is a recognizable face, and then fill in the rest of the cast with no-name actors and actresses. Here we get Statham (rising action star at the time), Snipes (past his prime star with some legal issues) and Phillippe (young star who never quite rose to stardom). The three lead performances range from decent to pointless to wasted and then just some plain old bad. Statham's cool on-screen persona is there, but his American accent drifts in and out at will. Mostly, he looks frustrated or has a smart-ass grin on his face. Snipes' part amounts to little more than a cameo, but he goes for it in the over-the-top villain department. Phillippe just struggles. He gets the big, explanatory dialogue scenes and it's just bad. Uncomfortably bad.

The only other recognizable face is Henry Czerny as Capt. Martin Jenkins, the higher-ranking police officer who speaks in cliches, questioning everything and demanding things be done his way. Or the highway!!! It's the same part he played in Mission: Impossible and Clear and Present Danger.

Bad is bad, but then there's just awful bad. 'Chaos' has more of those awful moments than any guilty pleasure should have. My favorite right out of the Jerry Bruckheimer/Michael Bay school of Action Movies goes like this. Phillippe is chasing a suspect down an alley in a foot chase and smashes right into a row of parked motorcycles. Shane yells "I'm a police officer! I need your motorcycle!" at which point he puts on a ridiculous helmet and chases after him, a ridiculously long action sequence starting up. The other goes down the Overtly Uncomfortable Sexual Tension Department. Investigating a crime scene, Conners and Dekker talk to a CSI investigator (Keegan Connor Tracy) who tells Dekker she'd like to ride him and she has a list of approved things he can put in her mouth. Oh, all the while she's sucking on a sucker. Subtle, this ain't. You'll think you've stumbled across a Skinamax movie late at night.

Then there's the twist and then another and then another. The movie's title is based on chaos theory which suggests that seemingly random occurrences are actually related in some fashion or another. Random eventually leads to patterns so in fact, nothing is in fact, chaotic. There are so many good movies out there like The Usual Suspects and Fight Club and The Sixth Sense with excellent twists, really well thought out revelations that seem ridiculous, but nope, when you really start to think about them it all comes together. This is not one of those movies. The twists are both obvious and stupid, and the ending goes for a "clever" finale that plays against genre conventions, but even that falls short. Just nothing to recommend here unfortunately. Avoid at all costs.

Chaos (2005): */****

Major League

Just as a sports fan, I can appreciate there's something more special about certain sports than others. I love watching basketball, football, soccer and volleyball, but baseball will always be my favorite one to watch. That opinion not surprisingly makes the jump to sports movies where baseball movies rule supreme, especially 1989's Major League.

It's been 40-plus years (in 1989 at least) since the Cleveland Indians last won an American League pennant when a new owner, Rachel Phelps (Margaret Whitton), takes over the franchise. She's got a plan though for the struggling franchise. A clause in the city contract allows the franchise to move if attendance is at a league-low, and Rachel wants to move the Indians to sunny Miami. With hopes of driving fans away from the stadium, she assembles a team of past their prime vets, unrecognizable rookies, and in general, a team of misfits. Among the group is creaky-kneed veteran catcher Jake Taylor (Tom Berenger), ex-con with a live arm Ricky Vaughn (Charlie Sheen), and speedster on the bases Willie Mays Hays (Wesley Snipes). The team starts off badly enough, but then they figure out Rachel's plan. Can they turn it around in time?

Ignoring the two sequels (entertaining but admittedly mediocre), Major League is hard to beat as far as sports -- and more specifically  baseball -- movies go. It's truly funny with countless memorable bits and running gags, but the drama also feels real. From director David S. Ward, 'Major' used Milwaukee's County Stadium as a replacement home for the Indians. The actual MLB stadium gives an authentic feel to the developing season, especially late in the movie during the climactic one-game playoff with thousands of extras packing the stadium. It's also the little things, the running bits about different fans from the never-say-die fans in the bleachers (Too high! being a classic, watch HERE), the foul-mouthed, doubting Japanese grounds-crew, and then the average fan on the street, bonding together around their team. As a baseball fan in real life, it feels authentic.

The misfit underdog is nothing new to the sports genre, but the assembled group of misfit characters help make this movie a classic (even making the sequels tolerable in their own awful uniqueness). Some 23 years later, fans typically talk about Sheen's Vaughn or Snipes' Hayes, but Berenger is the star here. His creaky veteran has in baseball purgatory, wasting away in Mexico and hoping for a chance to get back to the majors. While the other characters may be more memorable, Berenger's Jake ends up being the heart of the movie, delivering a career-best performance. Sheen and Snipes are scene-stealers as the youngsters and breakout stars on the Indians. Sheen did his own pitching and looks like a baseball player while Snipes' infectious attitude makes it impossible not to like the character who's cocky and confident without being obnoxious.

Not so fast though, there's more, starting with James Gammon as gravelly-voiced, no-nonsense, old school baseball manager Lou Brown. A long-time minor league manager, he brings his gruff manner of coaching to the Indians, not wanting to put up with any primadonnas or attitudes. Among the other players are Roger Dorn (Corbin Bernsen), the third baseman more interested in his post-baseball career than showing effort now, Pedro Cerrano (Dennis Haysbert in a scene-stealing part), the Cuban exile outfielder who can crush fastballs but not offspeed pitches and turns to his voodoo roots, and Eddie Harris (Chelcie Ross), the junkball, rag arm pitcher who uses every trick in the book to keep batters off balance. Also worth mentioning is Charles Cyphers as Charlie Donovan, the Indians GM forced to keep his mouth shut as the team crumbles.

Now as good as all of these characters are, most people think of one thing when 'Major League' comes up, and that's long-time Milwaukee Brewers radio man Bob Uecker as Indians radio play-by-play Harry Doyle. A review dedicated solely to Doyle's on-air one liners would be one of the easiest reviews ever written. He drinks Jack Daniels while on-air and lacks even the slightest censor as he describes the action ("Indians manage one hit....one hit? One goddamn hit?"). Doyle's unique spin always keeps the radio listeners involved, famously describing a pitch seven to eight feet off the plate as 'Jjjjjjust a bit outside.' His on-air banter is perfect, his asides to his silent color man even funnier. A part that makes a good sports movie a great sports movie.

This isn't a perfect sports movie though, Berenger's love story subplot with ex-wife Rene Russo grinding the movie to a halt. Far too much time is spent on their backstory, distracting from the baseball action. As a baseball movie though, it is about as perfect as it gets. It gets the baseball right though with plenty of laughs, in-game action, and a great finale as the Indians battle to get into the playoffs. One of the best sports movies around.

Major League <---trailer (1989): *** 1/2 /****