Mercenaries – Expendabelles 3.0 from The Asylum review

Take 1 cup Expendables, 1 lb The Losers, a dash of Sin City, a full Brigitte Nielsen and roast until movied; you get The Asylum’s Mercenaries – Expendabelles 3.0.  I enjoyed this movie thoroughly.  Keep in mind, when watching a movie like this you have to expect the common action movie tropes to be present.  It’s no different from taking a big swig of a beverage you think is water and it turns out to be a clear citrus soda.  You have to know what you are walking in to.

The plot is simple but quite serviceable.  The President’s daughter gets kidnapped by a lunatic named Ulrika (Nielsen) who also happens to hate men. A team of female mercenaries is sent in to get her back and they save some other people. The male antagonists in this movie are portrayed as being stupid disgusting rapists that get off on women suffering. Ulrika openly encourages her men to rape women and murder innocent people, so I guess evil is without gender.

I mentioned the action movie tropes in this movie that I feel need to be listed and only partially explained as to not spoil the plot.

1. Ragtag group of misfits to do a job that no one more qualified can do for some reason from The A-Team.
2. The greedy double-cross from The Losers.
3. All the cheesy one liners you expect.
4. Guns with endless bullets. I counted a hand gun with a clip that had 25+ bullets.
5. Enemies with a complete inability to aim.
6. The leader that doesn’t follow the rules except for their own.
7. There is an impromptu ‘hero heals themselves’ scene straight out of Rambo 3
8. Everyone knows how to use guns. (Even characters that shouldn’t know. This has always bothered me. I have never used a gun but if I was in an action movie I would be an expert on repairing AK47s.)
   

   ECW! ECW! ECW!

Most of the actors here are actually pretty well-known.  Cynthia Rothrock is actually a very good martial artist and has been in a good number of martial arts movies.  She’s a 5-time world karate champion in forms and weapons; she has 6 black belts in Tang Soo Do, Tae Kwon Do, Eagle Claw, Wu Shu, Northern Shaolin, and Pai Lum Kung Fu.  Basically she could destroy everyone there if she wanted.  We also have Red Sonja, Copperhead from Kill Bill, Hot Terminator 3, and Regina from Lost.

Director Christopher Douglas-Olen Ray hasn’t directed a large number of movies but he did direct Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus, Shark Week, and 2-Headed Shark Attack.  I was seriously surprised that Nielsen wasn’t a shark the whole time (Sorry I spoiled that fact that Nielsen isn’t a shark in an Amazon suit).  Despite not having any sea life in it, he still managed to make a decent movie out of it.

Overall, this was a decent action movie.  I can see how a lot of people can beat this movie up for being derivative, ‘low budget’, or poorly acted.  These people live in a very negative world and should consider taking antidepressants.  If you are an action movie fan and you’ve seen all the big movies, check this one out with the proper expectations and you’ll be pretty happy with it.

P.S. This is my open letter to The Asylum.  You need to make a buddy cop movie with Vivica A. Fox and Brigitte Nielsen.  Fox’s character could be named Pearl White and Nielsen’s character could be named Ebony Black.  Here is a movie poster to get ideas from: