Reviews

Rambo — Snark Review

Sylvester Stallone’s fourth outing as the man who only fights when he’s pushed to the edge is an ugly, dirty, vicious, nihilistic romp who’s message seems to be: “Even God says it’s ok to kill sometimes.” In other words, it’s a brilliant piece of art.

Although it’s been about 20 years since John Rambo has starred in a film, this latest installment of the franchise looks as if no time has passed since the previous bloodbath in Afghanistan. Oh, Stallone looks much older, but that’s about the only difference. As a director, Sly made a bold choice to wallow the ’80s exploitation movie era, exemplified by the use of a grainy film stock. There’s nothing remotely slick or high-tech about this endeavor. I could be mistaken, but I believe some CGI was put into effect, whether it’s the flies buzzing around the piles of corpses or holes in bad guy’s body cavities as bullets go whizzing through them. But none of the effects draw attention to themselves and are barely noticeable. I think I only noticed because I was desperately looking for anything modern appearing in the film. And, given their simplicity, the modern effects look anything but modern in this still old-looking flick.

A good Rambo flick promises great bloody havoc, but Stallone startles us with starting this new film with very real and gruesome atrocities committed by Burmese soldiers against the Karen (pronounced Kar-inn) independence freedom fighters. Showing these scenes of actual death has a two-fold effect. One, it immediately grounds the villains in the film as inhuman monsters. But, at the same time, it sets the audience on an uneasy ground. I mean, we’ve come to watch this film to cheer on death and destruction. However, when we’re confronted with the real thing, you know it doesn’t really make you feel so good.

After forcing us to watch real atrocities, Stallone gives us a fictional scenario where Burmese soldiers play a “game” with their captives where they make them run across a rice paddy filled with land mines. While some poor souls get blown to bits — and literally Stallone shows us their bits — the “winners” of the game who make it safely to the other side are shot and killed. The Burmese are shown as completely soulless, killing and torturing monsters. And the main bad guy, the general I suppose, the one we know is going to get the most horrible revenge heaped upon him by Rambo in the film’s final frames, doesn’t even get any dialogue. We know absolutely nothing about this guy during the entire running time. Not his name, not his objectives and if he has more than two lines of dialogue in the entire movie I’d be shocked. In the Rambo universe, evil exists just for evil’s sake.

We first meet our hero hiding out from the “real” world wrangling snakes for a Thailand tourist trap where he’s approached by a group of Christian missionaries who want him to ferry them up the river so they can deliver Bibles to a Karen village. He’s first approached by the group’s male leader Michael (Paul Schulze) in a brilliantly choreographed scene, a simple scene, but one that shows how deep Stallone plans on taking this material. The scene is shot so the two characters talk between glass cobra cages. While Michael implores Rambo to help, the way the scene is shot he ends up talking more to the snake than to Rambo. Thus Michael, by asking Rambo for help with a simple task, is inviting the serpent, i.e. the devil, to enter his clean, Christian life.

But, of course, Michael can’t convince Rambo. It’s beauty, i.e. Juile Benz, who must eventually sway the beast. The back-and-forth between Benz and Stallone was actually the least convincing part of the film. Her dialogue is just some corny speech that at least gets the job done and gets the plot moving. Rambo eventually escorts the missionaries and lots of mayhem is soon to follow. The plot junk here isn’t important. Burmese soldiers obviously kidnap the missionaries and Rambo, with the assistance of some mercenaries, have to go save them.

The nighttime, rain-soaked raid where Rambo and the mercenaries invade the Burmese camp and do their rescuin’ is one highly tense, greatly choreographed sequence. As the missionaries are spread out all over the camp, there’s multiple actions happening at once, punctuated with a gang rape of some female Burmese dancers. This is a down and dirty series of events that is one of Stallone’s best directed sequences of his career. He artfully builds the action in growing increments on several different fronts concurrently into a mission taut with almost unbearable tension and suspense.

The finale, of course, and not to give any spoilers here, is what we’ve all come to watch a Rambo movie for — an all-out, unbelievable splatterfest of gore and mayhem. This is the time when you can sit back and say, “Yeah, I got my money’s worth on this one.” Stallone goes balls-out and comes up with dozens of spectacular ways to blow apart a human body in a shockingly gruesome orgy of mutilation. But by this point, we’ve come to understand that these Burmese villains, while they may be made up of flesh and blood, they aren’t human at all. However, neither is John Rambo. He may be the guy you may want to come save your ass, but war and killing ends up stealing everyone’s soul in the end.

© 2008 Cinema Snark.