Movie Review - 'Rambo'

Rambo

Starring Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz, and Matthew Marsden
Directed by Sylvester Stallone
Rated R

It's hard to know exactly what to think about Rambo, or how to judge it. After all, it's only several degrees different from the previous three movies in the series, the silent character of John Rambo continues to speak softly and carry a big stick, with plenty of dead bodies left in his wake.

Maybe if they'd brought in Joe Pesci for comic relief or something, like the Lethal Weapon series did - then Rambo might be more than just another monotonous rage of violence and gunfire.

Sylvester Stallone found great success both commercially and critically when he zeroed in on the doubts and fears of the aging fighter Rocky Balboa; the final film in that franchise (written and directed by Stallone) is eloquent, heartfelt, melancholy, and insightful. The same can not be said of Rambo, but then again, there's very little to know of the character in the first place.

There was, once upon a time, a John Rambo in a movie called First Blood. That guy was a Vietnam vet who couldn't align himself with the what was going on in America after the war. He had seen things no man should ever have to see and he emerged different, even fractured.

That John Rambo is barely recognizable behind the brute force of the box office hit Rambo: First Blood Part II, in which he's just a more precise killing machine, and but a distant memory in Rambo III, which is only worth noting so we don't lose count.

You would hope there'd be something new for Rambo now. And if you consider older to be "new," then you've found it. Otherwise, there's not much here worth seeing. Rambo hires out his boat and does odd jobs off the coast of Burma, home of the longest running civil war in the world. When missionaries want to use Rambo's boat to go upriver and deliver aid to the ravaged villages, Rambo tells them to go home.

Of course, there's no body count that way. So they hire Rambo and soon enough, they need his help to escape from a Burmese prisoner camp. As if by divine providence - they are missionaries, after all - a group of mercenaries has already been hired by their church to help extract the aid workers out of the camp.

Feel free to examine that part about the church hiring mercenaries again.

And then, as the song in the trailer suggests, the bodies hit the floor. I tried to count, seriously, but after 22 deaths, the last 17 occurring almost on top of each other, a running tally seemed futile.

In fact, futility was the overriding theme while watching Rambo.