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Rambo  Year Released: 2008
EvilDirector's Cynical Review of Rambo
*** 1/2 out of ****
"When you’re pushed…killing is as easy as breathing."
Walking out of a showing of Sylvester Stallone’s latest homage to his own Eighties’ icons, my companion and I quickly came to the decision that we needed a bumper sticker to more accurately reflect our newfound measuring stick for life: WWJRD, or What Would John Rambo Do? In modern society, and in modern movies, ambiguity is the order of the day; nothing is black and white, and everything is cast in shades of gray. This has given us nearly fifty years of nuanced characters, in both films and real life, but it has also clouded our view of moral situations and ethical judgments: nothing is right or wrong anymore. John Rambo, and, by extension, his alter-ego in Sylvester Stallone, have given us a throwback to the days when Duke Wayne was always right and the bad guys were always wrong; in doing so, they have also given us the best pure action film of the last decade, an adrenaline rush sure to please younger audiences while Rambo’s quaint morals and nostalgic glance back at the days where killing the bad guys was okay will warm the heart of their parents.
One has to give props to Stallone for revisiting his two great iconic characters, Rocky Balboa and John Rambo, and giving each a proper send-off. No longer are Tommy Gunn and the Afghani freedom fighters our last memories of our two great American heroes; Rocky came back with a touching and excellent Rocky Balboa, and now Rambo has done the same. For twenty years or so, John Rambo has been hiding out in the SouthEast jungles, capturing snakes for riverside shows and ferrying travelers up and down the anonymous brown waters. This is not the same Rambo we met back in Washington state in 1982; John has come to grips with what and who he is in the time since: a warrior. When a group of Christian missionaries try to hire him to take them into war-torn Burma, he initially balks at their insistence that violence won’t solve anything; he acquiesces to their request only because one of their number, a woman with understanding eyes for the chiseled “boatman”, convinces him that trying to do good is sometimes success in it’s self. Along the way, the missionaries get a good glimpse of what war is like when river pirates try to board their boat and rape the woman; Rambo kills them all, and finally lets his anger at the missionaries naïve refusal to countenance violence show when the leader, far from thanking him, effectively curses him while the blood of their would-be murderers still steams. In Burma, the missionaries get caught up in the conflict between the Burmese government and the Karen Christian minority, and by caught up I mean that they are mortared, shot, hung up in wicker cages, and tied up as dinner for wild hogs. Rambo is drawn into the rescue mission, along with some mercenaries, and between them, the promises of the extensive trailer campaign are fulfilled: bodies will hit the floor.
There was a lot of negative talk about Stallone’s ability to fill the gloves of Rocky Balboa one last time, and to do it without stretching believability beyond all reason. Not only did Stallone bulk up, but he crafted a story where the aging Balboa faced the same uphill struggle as the aging Stallone, creating a believable parallel that made that film the best Rocky entry after the original. Strangely, the same doubts never crossed my mind when John Rambo first appeared on frame, nearly twenty years after we last saw him in Afghanistan: unlike Balboa, Rambo doesn’t appear any “older”; in fact, he looks damn near timeless, a huge man chiseled seemingly out of solid granite. Stallone also wisely never pushes our believability in Rambo’s abilities: he’s a killer, but he’s not going to run up walls and do back-flips. For most of the thrilling climax, for instance, Rambo does his killing behind a Jeep-mounted fifty-caliber machine gun. Stallone also repeats the feel of Rocky Balboa by virtually cutting any kind of second act from the film, giving everything a tense, lean, relentless pace that well fits the attention-span of younger audiences who are strangers to John Rambo. The director also keeps his American icon out of the Middle East, the obvious choice when it comes to American film heroes nowadays. By placing the film in Burma, Stallone brings Rambo back to the jungle; he also can feel confidant in making the Burmese military into evil bastards deserving of evisceration. Do that with Arabic terrorists and Stallone would have been dodging Jihadist bullets for the rest of his life.
Some have labeled the film “action-porn”, which seems to me a label that gets tossed around a lot in this day and age. Those critics seem to take offense to Rambo’s non-ambiguous tone: there is right, there is wrong, and God help you if you’re the latter, because Rambo will be on your tail. Stallone is unapologetic about betraying carnage: limbs and heads explode, in copious detail and numbers. Somehow, though, I never felt it was “slasher” film carnage: this had a purpose, similar to the violence in The Passion of the Christ. Yes, it was an action thrill-ride of the highest order, extremely ably shot and edited, but it also opened my eyes once again to the true evil out there. There are not always shades of gray, and maybe today’s audiences need a little bit of violence to understand that. Since Rambo was out-performed by the embarrassingly bad Meet the Spartans, I wonder if it isn’t too late; I wonder if we aren’t so used to being politically correct that we’ve lost our teeth, and our taste to see anything in the world as black as pure evil. Stallone wisely doesn’t philosophize about this kind of thing verbally; this is, after all, an action film. But he does provide us enough clues, in the reactions of John Rambo, as to what he really thinks about shades of gray.
In the end, Rambo winds up exactly where the first film began: with John trudging down an American highway in a faded fatigue jacket, a duffel bag over his shoulder. With Rocky Balboa, and now Rambo, Stallone has rectified the mistakes of his youth in the Eighties, and now he has left us with two nearly perfect films in their genres. What will he give us next?
****- Perfect in Execution, Riveting, and Bound to Be A Classic
*** 1/2- Nearly Perfect, Riveting
***- Flawed in Some Manner, But Overall well Made, Entertaining
** 1/2- Flawed, Entertaining on a Guilty-Pleasure Level
**- More Flawed Then Not, Only Occasionally Entertaining
* - Completely Flawed, Never Entertaining
Submitted by Evildirector on February 2, 2008 - 5:55pm. |
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Finally saw the movie, and
Finally saw the movie, and yes it was great!! A final reminder...you don't fuck with John Rambo! A fun throwback to the 80's action flicks, when you didn't need CG or wires to get your heart racing...just big guns and explosions!
As for action porn...heck, I think pg-13 action movies are the irresponsible ones, not the hardcore R ones. People need to be reminded what violence is capable of. Shooting someone is not clean and easy like in Mission: Impossible. It's messy. Blood flies, brains splatter, heads explode. The only reason I can think that critics would have a problem with the violence in this film, is the mixture of different types of violence, and admittedly a bit of a bump I have trouble getting over. Sly opens the film with footage of actual violence, horrible and cruel. Then we transition to fake voilence, but a representation of real atrocities. And then within 30 minutes we're cheering at Rambo shooting guys and arrows popping out of the bottom of people's jaws. I dunno, it just seems hard to reconcile that. Though I suppose you just have to look at it as sort of a fantasy movie. What we'd all like to see done to the people who commit the real atrocities. That we wish someone like John Rambo could walk in and single handedly (or with the help of bickering mercenaries) take out all the evil people of the world.
I think the big appeal
I think the big appeal was the there was no moral justification for Rambo's violence: no diplomatic talks, no PC outreach...in his view, the Burmese military was evil, and he was doing what he was born to do: kill them. Any other movie now a days would seek to justify his violence, but Rambo has moved past that. He kills. It's what he does.
"There Comes a Time in Every Man's Life When He Must Spit on His Hands, Hoist the Black Flag, and Start Slitting Throats."
-HL Mencken
Its not just RAMBO kills...
its THE WAY he kills also.
He goes Rambo on them poor bastards!
Been meaning to post about it, but man.. its hectic these days. Anyway, I just wanted to say I was very pleasantly surprised by this movie. I was not expecting it to grab me emotionally, thats the last thing I expected John Rambo, of all people, to do. And it did. Maybe I'm getting old :)
But yeah, it works. Its the oldest trick in the book to show the bad guys being mean to innocents, but it works, and when I saw the way the soldiers were abusing the people, I was reeeally rooting for Rambo to GO RAMBO on them sad fuckers. And boy, he did. He sure diddily-did. I got my ticket's worth of lead and guts.
P.S. You know your movie has made a cultural impact when its incorporated into the language :)
You know your movie has made a cultural impact when its inc...
fuck ya das true...
The Real Thing
most of my cousins in da philippines are pretty much intense anyways... just a while back, his older bradda got shot with an AK and needed money from us, but da doctors wouldn't even touch him till they saw money or an agreement... that place is fucked up...
Wow, we've been talking about fantasy violence, but that's the real thing, isn't it? Messy and expensive, and with long-term consequences. Fucked up indeed...
Bullseye!
"First Blood" affected me deeply when I saw it as a schoolboy. Every so often I rewatch it, going Rambo-crazy all over again. He's a terrific character, with inner pain and a sense of justice, whom you'll cheer for even as he piles the landscape high with bodies. There's a reason why our dogs were called Rocky and Rambo.
Having said that, I was not intending to see this, since I thought it might be even more preposterous than Rambo II, where John went back to Vietnam to find the war was essentially still on (huh?), or Rambo III, where John the All American Hero fought against the Evil Russians side by side with the Noble Taliban (and hasn't history dated THAT ridiculous premise!), but now I will. You've talked me round- and you're dead right that it's high time there was an on-screen antidote to the political correctness of our time.
I only wish that this had been the Rambo sequel I've always dreamed of: the prequel actually- showing John in action back in Vietnam in the 1970s. Oh well, some films we simply have to make in our own imaginations.
**** out of **** for this review. Bullseye, ED!
Speaking of dog names...
Rambo & Rocky Paw in as the Top Pooch Names in Britain
By PRNewswire - Lawrence Davis
Ozzy, Elvis, Busted or Posh - would you name your pet dog after a celebrity or famous person? Well the majority of us would, according to a recent survey of 1,000 Brits, commissioned in the lead up to the Pro Plan Pup of the Year Final (6th January) - the most prestigious puppy competition in the UK and a precursor to Crufts.
And it seems the more retro the name the better! As we teeter on the brink of 2005, it appears we would rather be back in 1985, with 43% of all respondents saying that they would name their pet pooch after Sylvester Stallone's character in the 80's hit Rocky or otherwise Rambo. Interestingly, the majority of respondents who said this were aged between 16 and 24 years. 29% of 25 to 34 year olds said that they would name their dog after Black Sabbath's lead singer and reality TV show star, Ozzy Osbourne and 23% of 45 to 65 year olds opted for Elvis - however this age group was also keen on naming their dogs Rocky or Rambo too (21%)!
Top 5 Dog Celebrity Names:
1. Rambo or Rocky
2. Ozzy
3. Elvis
4. Posh
5. Britney
Source: Nestle Purina
...from www.lasplash.com
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