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Rambo (2008) *1/2
Director: Slyvester Stallone
Starring: Slyvester Stallone, Julie Benz, Matthew Marsden, Graham McTavish, Paul Schulze, Reynaldo Gallegos, Tim Kang, Jake La Botz
Rejoice Rambo fans, rejoice, for the man of few words and many bullets has returned in a 21st century style action movie, complete with the new action requisite of hand held camera scenes. This modern look is mixed with retro slow motion sequences and also features the God awful return of the 90’s bullet-eye angle (like the camera is is on the bullet). The action scenes are exciting, so it’s target audience will be unlikely to object to the canned dialog, utter lack of any interesting characters or even any stereotypical development of the cliched characters. Why bother with that? Instead, there is violence piled on top of violence and, in a new twist for the Rambo series, there is a disturbing level of sexual violence, though it is tastefully handled with little nudity (insert sarcastic chuckle here). The whole thing is written, directed, produced, and probably catered, by Sly, of course.
John Rambo is living a quiet life as some kind boat-driving, snake catcher in Thailand, when he is approached by a group of young missionaries off to do good in neighboring, war-ravaged Burma. When John is unable to use his monosyllabic skills of persuasion to dissuade the group from going to offer aid, he is charmed by the only female member of the group, Sarah (Julie Benz) into taking them in. It doesn’t take long for trouble to start and the body count begins before he gets them to their destination with only a minimum of mayhem. He leaves them there and returns to busy life. Soon, however, they are taken prisoner by a group of nonsensical somebodies who seem to have no goal beyond killing and raping everyone they find. John can’t let that happen. You can guess what happens next.
I knew this would happen. Now that these continuations to 80s blockbusters have begun, they won’t stop until we are rolling around on the box office floor crying and pounding the floor. I tried to do it before this one, but I need help, people! I’m only one man! Rambo is a low brain action feature, that also vomits out an offensive, condescending view of changing the world without violence as pointless, naive and impossible. They must be right. Humans have been fighting for forever, and that really seems to be working in keeping the violence level down. Ok, all kidding aside (for now, at least), this Stallone offering will please fans of Rambo 2 and 3. Younger action fans may like it, as well, but it does lack the familiar style of the current bullet operas. As for the rest of us, we can only lie in silent fear that the Indiana Jones entry into the Hollywood 80s revival festival is up next, but we can trust Ford, Lucas and Spielberg, can’t we?
