Less of a headache than the other Hangovers, but a long way from anything special.

Rating: 6/10 (11 September 2018)

Contrary, seemingly, to everybody else, I didn't care much for the first two "Hangover" films - the sheer volume and all the charging around had them feel like more was going on than actually was... It was to my tremendous surprise, then, that I took to the third film of the trilogy, which is certainly enjoyable if you try to put the first two films out of your mind and enjoy it for the rather daft causality driven thriller that it is. If you gave it a tweak here and there; kept the overarching plot devices and other content, "The Hangover: Part 3" becomes a little like an Elmore Leonard story or one of Westlake's 'Dortmunder' novels - luckless characters on the wrong side of some even worse people depicted as trying to get out of the jackpot whilst having a hard time obeying the law.
The film, unlike the other two, chooses not to revolve the story around the aftermath of a night of drinking - the characters here are not relegated to attempting to piece together the remnants of a botched boozy fiesta from behind the veneer of a seemingly incoherent set of clues. Rather, the film grants them sobriety and lucidity: they know exactly what the score is and are otherwise in a state of able-mindedness to go about fixing it. The 'Wolfpack' remains unchanged: Bradley Cooper; Ed Helms; Justin Bartha and Zach Galifianakis are back playing Phil, Stu, Doug and Alan, respectively. In sticking to tradition (sort of), they lose Doug and even, for a brief few scenes, reacquire a familiar face played by Mike Epps.
The reason for Doug's disappearance this time is the very real and very dangerous threat of a gangster named Marshall, who puts the wind up our established foursome and is played by John Goodman with satisfying gusto. For reasons not otherwise entirely convoluted, events dating right back to the first film linked to an off-screen a drug deal one of the Wolfpack was inadvertently involved in have caught up with them, and they must find the irresistible force of international man of mystery Lesley Chow (Ken Jeong) in order to put things right.
Much of this is a cue for mayhem, particularly when Chow himself tricks the gang into stealing something for him which they really ought not have done, but mayhem which just seems to be under a tighter rein that before. Perhaps it is because I am too often a sucker for films such as "City of Industry" when they come along that I enjoyed this Part Three, which essentially depicts (sort of) the aftermath of a heist and those on the wrong end of a betrayal during said heist who then strive to get their 'share' back. Broadly speaking, American critic Christy Lemire is right when she writes that the film "...runs a different sort of risk by going to places (different) than its predecessors, both artistically and emotionally. It dares to alienate the very audience that made 'The Hangover' the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time."
In a move which should, for all intents and purposes, have made me dislike it even more than the first two, the film combines the elements of its predecessors: the espionage and action-orientated fluff of the second, which is interwoven, partly, with the locale and the players of the first. The tone seems more grown up - there is more at stake; none of our characters is having fun in this particular adventure. Gone is that sense of it being a bit of a romp or a bit of a laugh, and it stays on a track that stops it from veering off into the nightmarish territory of the second. In a crucial moment which represents, more broadly, the maturing of the series, the film dares to have its characters express both disgust and exasperation when their misadventure forces them to roll back into Las Vegas to find what they're looking for.
The film is far from anything fantastic; it is no tremendous experience, neither moving nor affecting. It possesses little-to-no especially attentive character study beyond the crew's lamenting of being forced into confronting old hunting grounds and crossing paths with old enemies: Galifianakis' character opens the film with a sequence you will not have previously witnessed involving a sports car and a giraffe - from here, his day gets worse when he suffers a bereavement at home and then faces being carted off to a psychiatric institution. In terms of individual film characters having a bad day, rarely does it get much worse. But where does any of it go? By the end, he is still a liability. Has he changed? We can't say, as the film terminates just as a new chapter in his life opens up. If there is never again another "Hangover" film, it would not bother me in the slightest, although, to my minute shame, I did enjoy this one.