Ramboned
posted on Friday, January 25, 2008 in Movie Reviews
Did we really need another Rambo film? The easy answer to that question is “probably not.” The days of the super-action flick are long past. People have begun to look for more in their action films than a muscular guy who can kill an entire army by himself. John Rambo, however, tries to be a whole lot more than that. It attempts to address current controversial global issues, and tries to present a philosophical and ideological conflict through its characters. It just doesn’t do it very well. John Rambo has retired to Thailand, where he finds and captures snakes for a living. He is approached by a group of Christian missionaries, who ask for his help in guiding them upriver into Burma, so they can provide medical assistance to victims of Burmese genocide. He helps them, only to learn later that the village that the missionaries were helping was attacked, and that the missionaries have been captured by an evil Burmese army. It’s up to Rambo to lead a group of mercenaries to rescue the missionaries.
The story highlights a real-life conflict that’s often missed by people. The Karen people of Burma have long been fighting for independence against the military government. Their insurgency has been met by what is essentially ethnic cleansing, with the Burmese military wiping out entire Karen villages, including all the women and children. It’s a very complicated issue, but John Rambo distills it into a very black-and-white conflict. It really kind of strange, because it feels like there’s a genuine yearning to address this very real and very serious conflict, but the film takes things to such an extreme that the reality of the situation doesn’t shine through. The main villain of the piece is a monster, pure and simple, without any redeeming qualities or complexity whatsoever. Story-wise, that doesn’t make for a really good narrative, and one can feel the weakness of the story about midway through the film.
In the end, this film is really just about killing bad guys, and in that regard, this is a fantastic film. The level of violence in this film is tremendous, with limbs flying all over the place and blood being spilled like water on San Juan day. When people get shot in this film, they explode. For a lot of people, the violence will probably be too much, but really, what Stallone accomplishes here is pretty remarkable. The whole point of Rambo, of course, is to pull back the curtain and really show how horrible war really is. Nobody dies in slow motion. When a person dies, it’s horrible, and it’s a completely visceral experience. Some of the death scenes in this film feel like a gut punch.
In terms of acting, it’s only Stallone that really shines. Stallone’s John Rambo is still one fantastic character, a powerful mix of cynicism and honor that’s always fun to watch. He has a way of being able to say pretty corny things and make them sound inspiring. The rest of the cast doesn’t fare so well. Julie Benz, who’s usually a pretty good actress, delivers a really weak, almost robotic performance. The rest of the cast goes really over-the-top.
It’s very easy to determine whether you’re going to enjoy this film. Are you the kind of person who might enjoy seeing people being torn to shreds by machine guns? If you are, please get some help. But before you check yourself in, you might want to see this film. To be serious for a moment, there’s really a lot to enjoy in terms of action in this film, and sometimes, all you really need is to see Rambo fight some bad guys. If you aren’t the kind of person who might enjoy seeing people being torn to shreds, just avoid the film completely, because it doesn’t have anything else to offer.
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