The Dependable Cliché-ables.

Sylvester Stallone buys a book from amazon.com called 1001 Dependable Movie Clichés (and How To Utilize Them All In One Movie). Then he writes THE EXPENDABLES 3.

DEPENDABLE CLICHÉ: Break an old team member out of jail. Barney Ross (Stallone), leader of the ragtag mercenary guerilla group The Expendables (Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture and Terry Crews) break Wesley Snipes out of tax prison.

DEPENDABLE CLICHÉ: Opening action sequence so outlandish you might think you’re watching THE AVENGERS; will blow your mind or make you roll your eyes, depending on your age demographic.

DEPENDABLE CLICHÉ: Old lions replaced by young guns. Barney looks around one day after a blow-em-up mission and sees the grass brown and the social security check in the mailbox (i.e. it’s autumn and no one’s gettin’ any studlier), so disbands his loyal brahs in favor of brawlers who still have all their own teeth.

DEPENDABLE CLICHÉ: Kelsey Grammar escorts Stallone through The Recruitment Montage.

DEPENDABLE CLICHÉ: Old versus Young; snappy repartee and insults fly between old lions and young guns. Irony is: these young guns come with no legacy, we feel no connection with them, we don’t care if they live or die – now they really ARE “expendables”!

DEPENDABLE CLICHÉ: Hot Chick Kick Ass. Ronda Rousey in her first feature, bringing krav maga and pearbottom, for director to film with spinning cameras like Scarlett Johansson’s thigh-jitsu. Enough muscle to compensate for her butterface.

DEPENDABLE CLICHÉ: Looker With Insubordination Complex (Kellan Lutz, THE LEGEND OF HERCULES); the “What’re you running from?” cliché.

DEPENDABLE CLICHÉ: Blade gets to be blade. In competition with Statham, Snipes is also a knife-man.

DEPENDABLE CLICHÉ: Confidential Files with more PICTURES than written reports. Like a kiddie storybook.

DEPENDABLE CLICHÉ: Another seaplane with teeth painted on it.

DEPENDABLE CLICHÉ: One of the Expendables is mortally wounded, causing Barney to get cold feet (“The ride’s over”) and disband the team.

DEPENDABLE CLICHÉ: Young team is captured by bad guy.

DEPENDABLE CLICHÉ: Old team has to rescue young team.

DEPENDABLE CLICHÉ: Bad Guys No Aim. One million incompetent army guys can’t kill ten Expendables.

DEPENDABLE CLICHÉ: Bigger-than-usual army guy sent in to fight fight punch punch Statham – because that’s what this army needs – more punching rather than guys who can aim.

DEPENDABLE CLICHÉ: Arnold: “Get to the Chah-pah!”

Their faces are discolored, their skin is sagging, their eyes glazed over with mucus, their mouths deformed. They’re not monsters, they’re just old.

Bloated Arnold Schwarzenegger looks downright haggard, like he’s about to keel over from eating too much. Then – Harrison Ford as Drummer, looking even older, his mouth a pulpy formless slug. (How’s he gonna do EPISODE VII like this?) Jet Li (who might break a bone if he attempts any karate) with three lines, most of them aimed at being Arnold’s bottom bitch.

DEPENDABLE CLICHÉ: Han Solo piloting a Millennium Chap-pah!

‘Roid rage.

Stallone’s face in perpetual mourning. Honestly, I’d feel sorry for this old guy if he weren’t a multi-millionaire. I don’t know whether he looks that way because he’s acting sad that his team are gettin’ too old for this shit, or because he really is gettin’ too old for this shit!

DEPENDABLE CLICHÉ: Barney’s team, standing on the runway, legs akimbo, all manner of weapon dangling from their big-dicked selves, Statham declaring, “You were stupid enough to get yourself into this mess – we’re the only ones crazy enough to get you out of it!” Statham is still in stellar form. How could anyone conceive of calling him old?

No Bruce. Antonio Banderas instead, comic relief.

Speaking of too old for this shit, Danny Glover’s hetero lover Mel Gibson is Stonebanks, movie’s resident villain, floating in a sea of DEPENDABLE CLICHÉS:

• once a founding member of the Expendables,
• now a criminal mastermind arms dealer;
• his tight security involves big guys in shades and three black SUVs tailgating each other;
• he takes on Stallone in a final fight
• where they opt to drop their guns and duke it out (for honor? padding? stupidity?)
• then decide to each go for their guns to see who can shoot the other first…
  Really, need I go on?…

DEPENDABLE CLICHÉ: building explodes finale; Stallone running, jumping from the explosion into the chah-pah!

DEPENDABLE CLICHÉ: Correction – Stallone couldn’t possibly jump into the damn chopper – he MUST hang onto the chopper’s struts. It says so right there in 1001 Dependable Movie Clichés.

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