…a disappointing film that might have benefitted from investing more in script rewrites than star salaries. Its nostalgia value aside, this is one noisy bore.

Specifics don’t matter, and a thermonuclear bomb and CIA black ops are background noise in a film that’s about bullets, biceps, blasts and lot of blah.

Watch this one if you are a true blue fan of ’80s action thrillers who would like one more walk down the nostalgia lane with ‘old’ heroes. For the rest of us, it is time to dust out those old CDs and watch a re-run of their truly good films.

Expendables 3 reminds you of the mindless Bollywood films of the 90s that were rigid in formula and high on star power that combined delivered something in the sub zero range. Such a waste of time. Expended for no reason at all.

I may have issues with the third installment but the joy of watching these heroes together on screen is a movie event marked in my calendar until they keep making them.

While an ensemble cast is indeed impressive, you might feel that so much more could have been done with the story in terms of excitement. Stallone and Arnie fans might also feel a bit shortchanged regarding how much screen time their two favourite characters have got. While the action is indeed high gear, the gore (evidenced in the previous film) is turned down a notch. Nonetheless, it does serve up a decent chunk of old-school action.

Laborious and too long, there isn’t much excitement in this enterprise either even though it has got more than handful action heroes on the scene.

The action itself is cumbersome and unimaginative, and none of the one-liners are punchy enough to make you laugh. Those were the two elements that made these old timers famous, and the film fails to deliver on both counts – a fatal mistake.

What keeps you hooked is your patience or your fancy craze to see the once glorious A-list action stars perform. By and large, “The Expendables 3” may appeal only to front benchers who enjoy the adrenaline rush of mindless violence.

The plot is thin, sure. Predictable maybe, but the execution is good. All in all, a watchable movie with the action building till the very end.

If there is one reason why it is a tad bit easier to be kinder to an Expendables film, than to, say, Kick or Jai Ho, it is the technical wizardry at their disposal. All of the most far-fetched action scenes merge live-action and CG beautifully, making it easier to suspend one’s disbelief. Real-looking ludicrousness is, after all, quite easier to buy than tacky-looking ludicrousness.

…with minimal dialogues and primal posturing, The Expendables can still expand in less mature territories in their dubbed avatars for here Stallone is no less than Singham.