Rambo [2007]

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Editorial reviews

Amazon.co.uk review

If you've been wondering what ever happened to ex–Green Beret super warrior John Rambo since he singlehandedly shot up a Pacific Northwest town (First Blood, 1982), returned to the jungles of 'Nam to free U.S. POWs held long after war's end (Rambo: First Blood Part II, 1985), and interrupted the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan long enough to blow lots of stuff up and rescue his old commandant from the Reds (Rambo III, 1988), then Rambo (2008) is for you. Without so much as a IV to dilute the brand name, Rambo --which is what most of us called the second, most iconic film in the series--may aspire to open a new era for a pop legend. But it's a thoroughly mechanical attempt to re-animate a franchise that, absent the anger, frustration, and self-loathing of the post-Vietnam years, has no meaning or purpose. For some time now Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) has been putt-putting along the Thai-Burmese border in a longboat, catching exotic snakes to sell. As for the 60-year civil war in Burma between the brutal government and the Karen independence movement, he ignores it. Enter a party of American missionaries whose dewy blond spokeswoman (Dexter's Julie Benz) asks Rambo to haul them upriver so that they can bring medical aid to the insurgents. After the requisite number of monosyllabic refusals, he does. Soon afterward the do-gooders are in a world of hurt, and he's summoned to lead a squad of mercenaries on a rescue mission.

As storytelling, the latest Rambo is the most bare-bones of the bunch. Rambo has little to say, so it's especially galling that Stallone, as director and co-writer, obliges him to have essentially the same conversation at three different points (the final distillation: "Live for nothing or die for something"). The Burmese army goons seem in competition to commit the most hideous atrocity (e.g., child skull-crushing underfoot), the better to justify the eventual, lovingly protracted spectacle of them being eviscerated by high-powered weaponry. Although shot in Thailand, the movie has mostly been photographed in brown, reducing any particular sense of place but, perhaps, perversely increasing our gratitude for the splashes of purple whenever hot metal tatters flesh. --Richard T. Jameson

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Synopsis

Twenty years after the last film in the series, John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) has retreated to northern Thailand, where he's running a longboat on the Salween River. On the nearby Thai-Burma (Myanmar) border, the world's longest-running civil war, the Burmese-Karen conflict, rages into its 60th year. But Rambo, who lives a solitary, simple life in the mountains and jungles fishing and catching poisonous snakes to sell, has long given up fighting, even as medics, mercenaries, rebels and peace workers pass by on their way to the war-torn region. That all changes when a group of human rights missionaries search out the "American river guide" John Rambo.

When Sarah (Julie Benz) and Michael Bennett (Paul Schulze) approach him, they explain that since last year's trek to the refugee camps, the Burmese military has laid landmines along the road, making it too dangerous for overland travel. They ask Rambo to guide them up the Salween and drop them off in order to deliver medical supplies and food to the Karen tribe. After refusing to cross into Burma, Rambo changes his mind and takes them, dropping them close to one of the Karen villages.

Less than two weeks later, he receives a visit from a pastor tellng him the aid workers did not return and the embassies have not helped locate them. The pastor has mortgaged his home and raised money from his congregation to hire mercenaries to free the missionaries, who are being held captive by the Burmese army. Although the United States military trained him to be a lethal super soldier in Vietnam, decades later Rambo's reluctance for violence and conflict are palpable. However, the lone warrior knows what he must do...

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Synopsis
Coming off the success of 2006's ROCKY BALBOA, action star Sylvester Stallone revisits yet another of his iconic characters from the 1980s, John Rambo. Now living like a hermit and wrangling rattlesnakes in Thailand, Rambo is drawn back into the action by a group of missionaries who want the taciturn, possibly psychotic, Vietnam vet to ferry them upriver into Burma. Though he initially proves reluctant--'Burma's a warzone'--Sarah, played by Julie Benz, convinces Rambo of their noble intentions. Doesn't he want to relieve suffering and stop ethnic cleansing? But when the group of idealists gets captured by the Burmese army, it's up to Rambo and a team of multinational mercenaries to save the day. What follows is an exhilarating, hypnotic explosion of violence as Rambo fights genocide with genocide, destroying men with high-powered machine guns, well-placed bombs, razor-sharp machetes, and, the most deadly weapon of all, his bare hands.
Rather than trying to update the character, RAMBO succeeds largely by returning to the 1980s values that made its hero so iconic in the first place: his pathological obsession with laying waste to emphatically evil characters in increasingly grotesque ways. Indeed, the film's action sequences recall the opening of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, as bodies turn to reddish slush, entrails pour forth with abandon, and limbs are severed with bewildering frequency. Stallone (who also wrote and directed) perfectly embodies his role as a muscular, mumbling killing machine.

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Customer reviews

review by: stipesdoppleganger date: 2008-08-29 rating:
Technically brilliant hideously violent tripe . Was i entertained?.....you bet.
There is a point in Rambo where a Christian aid worker tells John Rambo "taking a life is never right" (even though the men Rambo has just obliterated were going to kidnap and gang rape the one female in their midst ) and you just know that the line is going to have pay off before the films conclusion . Sure enough before the credits roll that same aid worker is hitting a mans head with rock like he's trying to win the biggest cuddly toy on a fairground test your strength machine. By this I took it to mean that the films central message is that no matter how reprehensible killing may seem sometimes it's the only way for the virtuous to survive and evil to be defeated. It's also if this film is to believed extremely messy so best invest in some industrial strength stain remover.
Having revived one franchise with "Rocky Balboa [2007]" Stallone obviously felt there was further mileage to be had from the mumbling mixed up Vietnam Vet John Rambo . Some of the ludicrous scenarios, discussed for this by Stallone had Rambo and his family ! kidnapped by white supremacists or Rambo working as a UN diplomat ( the obvious career choice for a man who can hardly string a sentence together) during a terrorist attack on the UN headquarters. Eventually Stallone and co-writer Art Monterastelli came up with a hugely simplified plot where Rambo is working as a snake capturer in Thailand when he is approached by aid workers Michael (Paul Schulze) and Sarah ( Julie Benz) who want him to run them and their colleagues into Burma on his little motorised boat . Burma , it has already been explained in an horrendously graphic montage at the films beginning , is in the throes of a civil war where the militants are wiping out the Karen tribe and the workers want to provide medical , educational and supply aid.
Not that Rambo sympathises. "Nothing changes , go home " he grunts . Sarah though appeals to him and before you can mutter extraneous sequel they are off up the river. Once they reach the nearest village the do-gooders go about doing good things until they and most of the village are hideously and realistically slaughtered by the militants. Except some are taken as hostages by the militants , including the fragrant Sarah ( not so fragrant now it must be said) and so some terribly clichéd mercenary types are employed to extricate them . Needless to day Rambo is the one required to really save the day and happily this involves brutally eviscerating hundred s of baddies with a gun as big as the biggest gun you can imagine. (very big in my case)
My slightly flippant tone may have led you to come to the conclusion that I didn't enjoy Rambo but actually it's great fun in that simplified way that watching really bad men getting their come uppance can be. I watched this film after watching Planet Terror [2007]" and the over the top splatter violence of that palls next to this film .Rambo is eye poppingly violent ( it has a death every 2.43 seconds or something ) but the violence isn't cartoonish . It is stomach charmingly realistic . The films greatest fault though doesn't lie with the violence but rather the characterisation or lack of it.
The Rambo of the excellent "Rambo: First Blood [1982]" has morphed from a tragic misunderstood figure into a monosyballic killing machine. The redemptive scene at the end feels tacked on in order to give Rambo some kind of character arc. Worse still the head villain is given little more to do than smoke moodily and glare out through his ever present sunglasses . He is possibly the most underwritten head baddie in cinema history .As for the mercenaries the gobby cockney Lewis (Graham McTavish) is so annoying I wanted him to perish before any of the enemy.
The final scene with Rambo spraying around gut busting bullets by the thousands but without hitting any one but the enemy is ludicrous .Yet despite all this I cannot bring myself to fully condemn Rambo. It,s hideously violent tripe but it,s technically well made and passes 90 minutes in no time. We all love seeing the bad guys getting a kicking and you won,t see more bad guys get a good kicking than you do In Rambo.

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review by: DJ date: 2008-08-26 rating:
What's the point? (spoiler warning)

Rambo frowns a bit, grunts, swears, blasts a few holes through some bad guys, and then cuts their heads off.

...Oops, sorry, I just gave away the whole plot.

I liked Hostel, The Hills Have Eyes, Funny Games and so on, don't get me wrong, but this new Rambo installment is ultimately for sad, insecure, power-hungry people who get a kick out of watching innocent beings getting raped, humiliated, cut apart, beaten and mutilated until death.

That's basically what happens throughout the entire film... until a sickeningly false happy ending- in which everything is supposed to be 'OK' again, just because the nice blonde lady is reunited with her partner. (Yea, you're supposed to forget about the hundreds of other innocent people who are murdered along the way.)

I am (was) a massive Rambo fan, so this addition was never going to get 2 stars or less... and to make this review sound less of a complaint, I'll mention that some of the scenery looks nice, and it's not too long- so whoever is being entertained won't loose interest very easily. For once though, I agree with the critics: The new Rambo film is big, stupid and pointless- just like the character.

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review by: date: 2008-08-24 rating:
Better than expected
I wanted to hate this movie so much, but came away having been throughly entertained (in an extremly violent way) for 90 minutes. It was a blood splattered 90 minutes but it was better than I expected.

Rambo has retired to Thailand, but he's still in top shape. Stallone of course is still in good shape aged 60. I won't discuss steroids at this point.... A group of missionaries are trying to helped the sick and wounded in Burmah. The people are living under a military regime which is brutal in the extreme. The missionaries are captured and Rambo ultimataly helps a group of mercenaries to get them out. The body count is vast, it might be a record for I know. If you have any problems with watching bloody scenes I'd give this film a miss as there are a great many which involve huge blood loss!

The ending is well done, almost taking you full circle back to First Blood from 1982. However making comparisons with that film are a mistake as it isn't in the same class. The main reason is a lack of another major character to support Stallone. In First blood we had the always excellent Brian Denehy as the local Sheriff, in Rambo there's nobody.

However overall I shall be quite happy to watch this again when the circumstances arise.

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review by: date: 2008-08-15 rating:
Popcorn at the ready!
Now don't get me wrong, war is a horrible affair, but I was right in the mood for this film! Loads of carnage, people being shot, blown up, eaten by pigs, etc...! Stallone doesn't say much for the whole film, but certainly ups the action stakes. A thoroughly bloody movie, just don't expect a deep story line ;-)


review by: Daddio date: 2008-08-04 rating:
Lost opportunity to finish a great series of films
After seeing Rocky Balboa and thinking it was a bridge too far I was not holding out much hope for this movie. I was wrong although Sly doesn`t say to much it is a good old Rambo kill`em all then kill them again from start to finish. The bullet ripping effects and carnage are just brilliant as they are directed towards a particularly loathesome bunch of low life soldiers. The film has a momentary reflection on the Johns life and times which prompts him to go on the mission. I really enjoyed the film right up to the end - it was here that Mr Stallone lets the film down it should have been 5 - 10 minutes longer would have been so good to see the character finally come home to his father and say something - anything but what we were left with. If Mr Stallone is out there and reads this go back and finish it off properly bring John home and let him be happy for once. (yes I know it is only a character!!) Still worthy of 5 stars just for the carnage which was to be expected and was a plenty.

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