Greetings again from the darkness. Whether you saw the first two in this series will directly correlate to whether you head to the theatre for this third entry. The filmmakers' attempt to attract a younger audience by adding a "new" crew and dropping to a PG-13 rating backfires, and will not provide the legs this franchise needed for more installments.
The regular old geezers are back: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Jet Li (briefly), and Arnold Schwarzenneger. In addition, we get new "old" blood in the form of Antonio Banderas, Kelsey Grammar, Wesley Snipes, Harrison Ford, and the dominating presence of Mel Gibson as the bad guy. The young blood comes in the form of Kellan Lutz, Glen Powell, boxer Victor Ortiz, and MMA superstar Ronda Rousey. The blandness of the newbies simply steals valuable screen time for the old folks, and the movie suffers because of it.
The film's biggest flaw, however, comes with the biggest screen hog of all-time: Mr. Stallone. We understand that this is franchise is his baby, but why field an all-star team if you won't let them play? Snipes gets some time early in the film, replete with a reference to his real life prison sentence for tax evasion, and Ford and Arnold get in a few shots, but the only savior here is Mel Gibson. It's a reminder of just how good he can be on screen ... if we could just forget what a horrible person he can be off screen.
There is no need to go into detail on the plot or describe any of the characters. You know what you are getting if you buy a ticket. It's just a shame the film's direction and script aren't at the level deserving of a cast that includes: Rambo, Mad Max, Blade, Conan, Han Solo, Hercules, Zorro, The Transporter, He-Man, and even ... Sideshow Bob!
