I just saw it again. Everything I said before still applies. I think it is awesome. Few points I forgot to mention..

1. Great to see Robert Davi.
2. Gibson's line "How hard can it be to kill ten men? At least wound a few of them?" is a great action-movie commentary. Sly's writing is often self aware, and I love it.
3. The other side to Sly's writing is the jokes that fall dead. Often there were times that the end of a dialogue exchange was not met with laughter...the punch lines did not work.
4. It would have worked better if Jet Li went to work for Gibson. It would tie into the previous films too, especially as Li was always searching for higher financial incentives (and they show us that Mel has lots of dough by forking out $3m on a shit painting). It could so easily have been Li that fired the rocket from the helicopter that toppled over the van that had a caught Mel inside.
5. The F-bomb was used by Ford and wasted by Ford. He smiles immediately after saying it, and it is supposed to be a serious scene. His sloppy face and uncaring attitude made his character look pretty retarded. But the scenes where he couldn't understand Statham were actually very good. But "Drummer's in the house" is not a good line.
6. Grammer was awesome yet again. The part where he leads Sly on about him having cancer has made me laugh twice now.
7. I think Mel's acting in the final fight is great up until he dies then he goes all spazoid and the actions do not really mimic the gun fire, and his reaction to the final shot is OTT.
8. I think people are spoiled. They are so lucky to get all of these stars into one film, and nobody appreciating that. I took a step back and saw that it is just awesome.
9. The opening scene ended abruptly. I would have preferred a few seconds longer before the title came up.

I don't think Sly didn't wrote any of the dialogue, He's said numerous times that outside of the basic storyline his screenplay credit was very "faint"

I saw it again. I liked it more. It's on par with the series, and I stand by the dramatic elements are where this film really works. I think they needed to raise the stakes even more. I personally didn't find this one any funnier or serious than the other two films. And dam the lack of blood is annoying, but now that the initial disappointment is gone the action scenes are still excellently produced, and the chemistry between the leads is actually really nice (I hope perhaps we'll get a few films with just a few of these guys together in the future). It's better than Lucy, TMNT, Hercules, and pretty much every straight actioner this year so it did it's job. I do hope we get one more final one. One to really shake it up.

The Expendables- A
Expendables 2- A+
Expendables 3- B+/A-

I'm watching it again and one thing I noticed is how Terry Crews' hospitalisation has very little effect on me since in TE2 an expendable actually died. The way that Hughes makes it such a big deal with the sad music and the over the top praying of the other members is kind of stupid, and this goes hand in hand with why the film should have been an R-rating. Kill Crews, and the vengeance resonates much more. Barney's reasoning for why he injured Crews is that "he did it to get back at me", but Barney [supposedly] killed Stonebanks, so how is just injuring Crews in any way a level-playing field? Surely to get back at him, he would need to kill Barney (or at the very least kill Crews).

Did Neil Young's "Old Man" being played in the bar at the end help with that grade?

As of Aug 18, they say 5-8 million WW downloads of the leak. That doesn't even include the amount of people that probably bought $5 bootlegs.

I think all in, Ex 3 is getting killed OS the worst. It looks like it's going to lose at least 120 million WW just from it. Kind of crazy. Easily the biggest case of how bad a leak can hurt ever.

That of course assumes that every person who downloaded it was going to pay to see it in a theater.

True, but you also must assume the family, friends, gf that they would have dragged to see it too. But prior to the leak, in China it was looking to do 70+ alone. Now it's questionable if it'll even top the first's gross of 30 million. Ex 2 did 50+

We'll see how much the leak affected it if China doesn't increase in gross. It opens today.

lol, I did enjoy hearing it in the film. I wish it continued to play over the end credits.

It would have been nice, yes. However, the title credits (that should have been at the beginning if this was really an 80s throwback movie) played directly after and "Old Man" is too slow of a track to play over that. But anyway, it's a good song and apt for this film's message.

The Expendables 3

I just watched it for a third time at the cinema (this time in Hong Kong). When I watch it for a fourth time (tomorrow), I will have watched it in three different countries. I don't have anything much to add to my critique/review, apart from to make an awesomeness list (how awesome each actor/character was out of 10):

10/10
Gibson
Banderas
Grammer

8/10
Statham
Stallone
Lundgren
Snipes

7/10
Powell

5/10
Arnold
Rousey
Ford
Davi
Ortiz

3/10
Crews
Li
Couture
Lutz

Actually I do have one new critique. I think that what didn't work here was Stallone laughing at his oddities. Like when he gets called "demented" by Statham, and when Grammer says "why don't you slip on a dress and give it a shot"...it would have been much better if Sly wasn't in on those jokes, but was the butt of them instead. It would have appealed to the teenagers that they were trying so desperately to acquire. It's a mismatch in marketing and product. Even with all the below average stuff in The Expendables 3, it's still a pleasure to watch and a total fun fest, and you know what, I couldn't think of anywhere else I'd rather waste a few hours than with my favourite action stars.

A-

Oh yeah, another thing I remembered when watching this movie is that maybe we are judging it incorrectly. We are always wanting it to be this next action classic, and that is what we measure it against. We want it to be as action-awesome as Rambo First Blood Part II or Die Hard or The Rock or Predator etc. But Stallone has said, time and time again in interviews, that this is more of a Dirty Dozen. At least that's how he sees it. So I think when seeing these films next time, I will view them differently.

If you think about it from that Dirty Dozen/Kelly's Heroes angle, they are very similar and in-keeping with the group camaraderie. There's your crazy one (Galgo and Donald Sutherland), your leader (Clint, Sly) and so on and so forth.

Obviously, because Stallone, Arnie, Willis, Statham etc. are known for such R-rated actioners, we instantly expect the same type of movie from them, but just on a larger scale. But that is perhaps not what these Expendables movies were ever meant to be.

Another thing I really liked about The Expendables 3 is how it modernized its soundtrack. This time around we have "A Light That Never Comes" from Linkin Park, "Come with Me Now" from The Kangos, and "Ticking Bomb" from Aloe Blacc. Now, I'm not sure if they are totally modern or not, but it doesn't matter, the tracks are a lot more modern than "The Wanderer", "Rip It Up", "Groovin'" and "It's a Beautiful Morning" from The Expendables 2. The songs in TE3 just work better than in TE2. I love all the songs in the franchise, though.

"Born on the Bayou" and "Mississippi Queen" from The Expendables have a very redneck country feel to them, so I was surprised when I first heard them.

I was surprised to hear the Kongos song in the film. I figured its prominent use in the TV spots to be an eleventh-hour response to its current chart popularity.

I watched it again, this time in China. LeTv seem to be doing some good local marketing. I went to another cinema and they were giving away underwear and dog tags with gansidui3 (pinyin for The Expendables 3) on them and the slogans "Don't Touch My Ass" and "Here's a Big Gun" on the crotch and rear. Funny for sure.

I went with my friends this time and they seemed to enjoy it mostly, but with some criticisms that have been mentioned before by others.

I got a chance to see the Unrated cut today. It's better but not by much.

Scenes Added:
Killing a guy on a toilet on the train
New Expendables bullshitting on the plane
More Banderas rambling

Outside of that I think 3 more Motherfuckers (One from Snipes, one from Gibson, one from Arnie)

The plus side is there are no bull shit cuts in every death. But there is still no blood. The action scenes work a lot better because of this, but dam is it annoying seeing dust come out of them every time a guy dies. I would have been fine if they did the EX2 treatment and CGId it in.

The only real positive and the reason to see the film unrated is the final battle. That's the bulk of the new stuff and that is awesome. I think Jet Li's role is doubled and Snipes throws a knife at a guys head and then roundhouse kicks him which was great. Statham gets the biggest expansion, he has some fights and some really cool things added. His henchman fight is so much better and 3 times as long. Banderas too.

Sadly Gibson vs. Stallone which I thought was a little short is the same length. Nothing new of Gibson, Ford, or even really Arnold.

This version could have easily still been PG-13. Still a B+. Some great parts, and some off putting parts making it too uneven to be the best. Watching the documentary was interesting. There was this awesome narration by Stallone in character that was like the best dialogue of the entire series, and it's no where to be found in the film. So strange.

Great review, thanks. I look forward to see it.

May be a hair better than 2 but that still means this was completely horrible.