The Expendables 3

This latest installment in Sylvester Stallone's murder-and-mayhem franchise is filled with beefy heroes, a multitude of chase sequences, and an endless barrage of bullets. The Expendables 3 opens with a helicopter-versus-train battle in which Barney Ross (Stallone) and what's left of his crew help knife expert Doctor Death (Wesley Snipes) escape from incarceration. Barney needs Doc to aid in thwarting an arms deal in Somalia. But their mission fizzles when they discover that the bigwig brokering the deal is Conrad Stonebanks (Mel Gibson), a former rogue Expendable who Barney thought he'd killed. Determined to take down sociopathic Stonebanks, Barney dismisses his former crew (Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, Jason Statham, Jet Li) and—with the help of Bonaparte (Kelsey Grammer)—hires younger, more agile, and tech-savvy newbies (Kellan Lutz, Antonio Banderas, Glen Powell, mixed-martial-arts champ Ronda Rousey, boxer Victor Ortiz). Aided by competitor Trench (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and joined by Agent Drummer (Harrison Ford)—who wants Stonebanks to stand trial for war crimes at The Hague—they're off to do the CIA's dirty work once again. Naturally, things don't go exactly as planned. Director Patrick Hughes's film is a formulaic soldiers-of-fortune story in which Stallone employs his usual three expressions (sorrowful, strained, and sneering), leaving it up to loquacious Banderas to somewhat enliven the tedium here. Optional. [Note: Blu-ray extras include a “making-of” featurette (55 min.), a “New Blood: Stacked and Jacked” featurette on new cast members (16 min.), “The Total Action Package” production featurette (7 min.), a gag reel (6 min.), an extended scene (3 min.), trailers, and bonus DVD, digital, and UltraViolet copies of the film. Bottom line: a solid extras package for a law-of-diminishing-returns threequel.] (S. Granger)