Rambo

Burma, a country torn with the atrocities of Civil war is the target of the latest Rambo by veteran actor Sylvester Stallone. My feelings after seeing this movie are mixed, there is nothing negative for me to say about the special effects, plot or acting, but I have to warn you, strap in tight and leave the women and children at home. I’ve called other movies high testosterone before but those pale in comparison to what I’ve just witnessed. This movie is balls to the wall, gloves off, razors at the ready, last man standing, blood and guts to the umpteenth power. You will either love the hell out of it or go home bitching about the scars it left on your poor innocent soul. Adrenaline does not hold a candle to the raw power of machine gun fire, claymore mines and the unstoppable force that is wielded in revenge and determination. Rambo will blow your mind.

Plot (Full Story Outline)
Having retired to Thailand after a life of war, John Rambo passes his days as a boatman and snake catcher for a local business. One day he’s sought out by a team of missionaries to help them reach Burma, where a civil war has left need for doctors, church types and teachers. Reluctantly Rambo warns the group of the dangers but helps them reach their destination only to find out later on that they had been kidnapped and possibly killed not long after he had dropped them off. Sarah (Julie Benz) is one of the missionaries (and the only reason Rambo had braved the trip into Burma’s warzone), and the only person to show genuine compassion towards him, and her memory urges him to go looking for her.

Accompanied by some foreign mercenaries, hired by the missionary’s leader, Rambo and a motley crew sail into Burma in search of the lost missionaries. Their search is fruitful and what starts out as a rescue mission escalates into the bloodiest war I have ever seen on film. A war between a handful of men and hundreds of butchers, a war that shows the error of man when he crosses John Rambo and anyone dear to him.

Synopsis
Sylvester Stallone directs, and acts in this movie and surprises me with the level of psyche he delves into for the Rambo character. For the first time we see the dark hero accept his lot in life as a death reaper, and we get a glimpse of what goes on in that thick skull of his. The film starts out with real footage of Burma… and I cannot stress warning here that the reality and the scenes will really make you cringe. They show real people burnt and mangled being thrown into piles; fallen corpses, rotting and dismembered from mines and gunfire, film from real journalists, clipped in to show that what is to be portrayed is real. There are scenes of murder and genocide and it is chilling to see the reality of the upcoming entertaining movie with this intro. It almost says to you “hey, you are about to see me shoot up a whole lot of bastards in this movie, and you will love it because they are going to be portrayed as evil demons. But before you laugh and cheer as I butcher these people, take a look at what the real people are doing to each other and realize that you have it good in your nice cozy theater seat. Now enjoy the film…” The gore of the film footage leads right into a scene where a bunch of soldiers are forcing innocents to play Frogger (run and dodge game) with land mines, and betting money on the winner.

The bad guys are portrayed as callous, cold-blooded, ruthless maniacs and it was very similar to the portrayal of the African soldiers in Bruce Willis’s Tears of the Sun. The bad guys rape, murder and slaughter innocents in droves and the leader is the biggest sociopath of them all. The legs that get blown off are numerous throughout the film and you cringe the entire time wondering who will step on a mine next. We are not given much time to hate the bad guys, but the little we are given is enough to portray them as demons who only deserve death for the things they do. Some of them are even pedophiles… overkill? Well maybe a bit, but there is a science to this, because you see, if Rambo does what he does to these guys towards the end and you aren’t 100% in agreement with him. Well you may actually think that the guy goes too far. So we learn to hate these child raping, woman kicking, village burning, maniacs so much, that when Rambo brings his hell to the party, you can’t say anything else but “Oh hell ya Sly, light those bastards up!”

I am serious when I say that this is one of the goriest, if not the most gory war film I have seen… and I have seen a lot, but it is extremely entertaining. Guys no worries, there are no Rambo 2 love games in this one, and there are no slow parts. It is a pot of water set down on a stove that is allowed to boil over to the point of overdrive, resulting in the pot exploding into a million pieces of red hot metal and you lying on the floor, riddled with pot shrapnel saying… “That was the best Rambo ever!” It is that good.

Now we’re gonna have a host of people saying it sucks because it had no huge drama, no plot twist, no love and no soft side. But I champion the other side who says yes, there is no soft side, this is a movie for the boys. They may have slowed down James Bond whoring on the ladies, softened his machismo and wiped out the man’s man character of yester year in lieu of femme fatales, no man’s land films and Reese Witherspoon. But Sylvester Stallone said you know what screw the pc movement, screw the critics and their love for chick flicks, I was an actor for the boys, so this new Rambo, is going to be for the boys and I am happy to say, he friggin nailed it. Go see it if you like action, gore or Rambo. Don’t go see it if it’s not your type of film, save your money and save us fans the effort of having to tune you out when you start crying bloody murder from its intensity.