The Expendables 3 Movie Review

Sylvester Stallone has spent the last eight years not so much trying for career renaissance, but to relive the glory days of his (relative) youth. Honestly, he wasn’t even that young when he was a major 80s box office draw. he has made new sequels to the Rocky and Rambo franchises, a boxing movie with De Niro that plays on their respective most iconic roles, and the Expendables franchise which is both tongue-in-cheek about the way it tries to relive the glory days of 80s action movie heroism and sort of serious in its attempt to be a modern action franchise. I’ll just put it out there that I really enjoyed the first film. It had some great playfulness, some killer action sequences and hand-to-hand fight scenes (especially those involving Jason Statham), and a great period appropriate villain and theme with Eric Roberts operating in Latin America as a kingpin. Our neighbors to the south served as the great action locations and source of villainy during the decade of cocaine. The Expendables was a welcome respite from the settings of Arab countries and former Soviet republics.

Lethal Weapon 4 Movie Review

First published on Uwire in Summer 1998.

Republished here with minor editorial adjustments, but nothing that affects content.

Just when you thought sequels couldn’t go any further, they did. The fourth installment in the Lethal Weapon series opens with a bang of an action sequence in which detectives Riggs (Mel Gibson) and Murtaugh (Danny Glover) gun down a man wearing an armored suit and carrying a flame-thrower.

The rest of the film follows with many more spectacular action sequences including a freeway car chase which outdoes nearly any car chase I’ve seen. Many of the sequences and the beautifully choreographed fight scenes are made possible by Jet Li, an Asian martial arts star making his American film debut. Li provides Riggs with the most difficult enemy of the series.

The Expendables Movie Review: Sylvester Stallone and other 80s Action Heroes Get a Dusting Off

Poor Sylvester Stallone. It must be dreadful to have been one of two kings of 1980s action films only to suffer a swift and steep decline through the 90s. Now well into his 60s, he is devoting himself to sad knock-offs of the films that made him a superstar once upon a time. First was Rocky Balboa, the sixth installment in that series, then Rambo, his fourth film playing that character. This year he came back for more as writer, director and star of The Expendables, an action film which revels in cheesy schlock, washed up stars and dead bodies.