Rambo Review

by Jerry Saravia (Faust668 AT msn DOT com)
January 8th, 2010

RAMBO (2008)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
RATING: Two stars

I confess that I am no fan of the "Rambo" series. I liked "First Blood" enough to wish later entries followed its suit of a loner Vietnam vet forced into action who realized that America in the Pacific Northwest was as violent as anything in Vietnam. "Rambo: First Blood Part II" and the unforgivably awful and monotonous "Rambo III" created a superhuman Rambo who was all about blood and guts and mowing down dozens of anonymous and villainous cretins without remorse or consequence (As Rex Reed succinctly put it, Rambo became "Superman with helicopters.") Rambo was considered the ideal, Reagan-era, flag- waving hero - the ultra-macho superman of very few words. The new "Rambo" (originally titled "John Rambo") is the same old song and, though it is riddled with flaws, it is far superior to the last two sequels. That is still faint praise.

Brawny-as-ever Sylvester Stallone is back as the Man of Far Less Words Than Usual, Johnny Rambo, who is living in exile in Thailand catching snakes! A group of church missionaries want to bring food, water, prayer and medical attention to the Karen ethnic tribe in Burma (now known as Myanmar). The Karen people are facing a genocidal apocalypse thanks to the murderous Burmese regime who have them under their control. The Burmese soldiers rape, pillage, implode and explode these villagers one by one. The missionaries need a guide, a man who knows how to steer a riverboat, and that is none other than Rambo himself. These missionaries know they are treading into dangerous territory but they have no idea what their musclebound guide had been up to in the old days. Remember that in "Part II," Rambo's mission was to photograph any MIA's. Yeah, right! Now in this movie, Rambo has that thousand eye stare and a toughness that screams "machine gun in cold dead hands." But no, the missionaries must think he is some sort of liberal Mr. Softy.

Rambo agrees reluctantly to help the missionaries and he must know they might get killed but he leaves them, and then comes back with a few mercenaries who are ready to kill. There is almost some one- upmanship from the mercenaries that is abandoned for the old-school level of gratuitous violence of the earlier pictures. Rambo shows his skills with bows and arrows, slices up abdomens and limbs and other body parts, and uses a machine gun on a turret while roaring in the trademark Stallone roar (he is also handy with explosives). The last half-hour of this film is chock full of graphic violence that includes everything from disembowelment to decapitation to exploding limbs but since the Burmese military are just one-dimensional savages, it is hard to work up much more than righteous applause in seeing them get their eventual just deserts. That is one thing strangely missing from this "Rambo" sequel: a new villain. Here, the villain seems to be the entire Burmese military and that is not satisfying enough for any action movie fans.

Stallone is an able writer and director in his own right but he reduces his iconic war hero to nothing more than a one-man war machine. Yes, I know, the earlier films portrayed the same kind of character but I was expecting more since it was Stallone at the reins and not George P. Cosmatos. Stallone got more mileage out of Rocky in "Rocky Balboa" than he does out of Rambo. If nothing else, Sly knows how to frame the action with dizzying results (using the kind of frantic cutting, jittery camera and purposeful dust prints of post-"Saving Private Ryan" action pics). And to be fair, the movie doesn't feature endless explosions like most of "Rambo III." But this movie's politics are given short-shrift and we see the violence poured on us from both the good guys and the bad in such grisly detail that it proves to be nothing more than exploitation of a real-life crisis. It is not technically entertaining, just nauseating. All in all, I felt a measure of nostalgia for what is arguably an amped and revved up 80's action picture but I got more of a kick with depth from 65- year-old Harrison Ford in the last "Indiana Jones" than I did from a 63-year-old brawny, taciturn hero who loves to slice and dice.

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