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.

25 Years Ago This Month: July 1989

Lethal Weapon 2 was the big release of the month, a sequel to the successful buddy cop film starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. The sequel added Joe Pesci for some truly annoying extra comic relief, but continued to tackle important topical issues. This time it was South African apartheid. Basically Riggs and Murtagh get to take down the racist institution all on their own. Or at least the criminal diplomat in Los Angeles running a major drug ring.

25 Years Ago This Month: March 1987

The Iran-Contra Scandal occupied much of the White House's time. Rebels moved into Nicaragua armed with American aid. The U.S. and the Soviet Union continued talks on the spread of nuclear missiles. U2 released The Joshua Tree. Disney CEO Michael Eisner reached a deal with French PM Jacques Chirac to purchase land for the construction of Euro-Disney and AZT was approved by the FDA for use in AIDS treatment.

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.

Payback Movie Review

First published in The Connecticut College Voice on 12 February 1999

I was immediately dubious of the tag line “Get ready to root for the bad guy” because Mel Gibson plays the supposed bad guy. You have to ask yourself in that situation, “Would the producers risk making Gibson a true-to-form villain?” The answer, of course, is no.

In Brian Helgeland’s directorial debut Payback, Gibson plays Porter, an anti-hero doing bad things according to the law, but doing them to men who are worse than he is. The film opens with a montage of Porter stealing someone’s wallet then running his credit card bills into the sky. He receives a check for $2.98 at a diner, puts down three dollars and takes two pennies from the tip at another table. There’s no question, he’s a regular baddie.