Rambo

There was a time when action movies were short, sweet and to the point. It was a much simpler time where Alpha men were Alpha men and bad guys were just evil. These movies were not so much concerned with plot as they were with showing the hero kicking serious ass. There was a time when these movie ran a brisk 90 minutes and had very little CGI. Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Willis, Van Damme and Seagal were the Gods who walked among common men kicking ass and not bothering to take names. They spoke rarely because they did their talking with fists, feet, knives and guns. No one cared if they could act as long as they could fight. That time has gone away. Action movies are now longer, sometimes too confusing and feature too many high stylized sequences. Sylvester Stallone is 62 years old and he did not want to make a movie that way, he wanted to make a good old fashioned throwback 1980's movie with a lot of violence, and boy did he succeed.

I won't bog this down in plot because the story is simple- John Rambo has been hiding out for two decades gathering fish and snakes and operating a boat near Burma. A group of American missionaries want him to get them to Burma to get medical supplies to the war torn area. Stupidly they do not listen to Rambo and because Rambo feels a sort of spiritual connection to one of the missionaries, he takes them. They get kidnapped and Rambo takes a team of mercenaries to track them down. He goes with the mercenaries, destroys a lot of stuff and kills a lot of people. The end.

A college professor counted the deaths in this movie and said there were roughly 240 people killed in Rambo. The people are maimed by bullets, blown to pieces by mines, they have their skulls pierced by arrows, heads chopped off, guts knifed out and a child is tossed into a fire. This is not an easy movie to watch, especially the scene where the little Burmese village is ransacked by the Army with Genocide on their minds. Children are shown being stabbed to death and we witness body parts fly all over the place. This is a reality in many parts of the world and while I am sure Stallone meant this as a political message, at times it is lost in the pure wicked carnage. Rambo is relentless in its quest for blood lust and its pure unadulterated message which is- Anyone can kill when pushed hard enough. The forgiving human condition is lost about 30 minutes in to the movie and it was probably killed with the same Gatling Gun Rambo uses to dust an entire army of evil doers. Nothing about a 62 year old War veteran storming the jungles is handled with a sense of irony or with a sense of that wink-wink, nudge-nudge sense of humor. No, this shit is deadly serious!

Of course, it is a terrible movie in most aspects of a movie. It is incredibly cheesy when the female missionary is on screen with Rambo and the acting all the way around is unbearable, and Stallone has a vision behind the camera that is not developed at this point, but honestly who cares? We want to see people die! Don't worry my blood thirsty friends, there is plenty to cheer about in the death category. We have to wait a full 60 minutes before we can cheer the violence because that is when the evil people get their just desserts and dessert is a dish best served with a helping of WHOOP ASS! John Rambo has always been an iconic killing machine, but in the final 30 minutes of this movie, he gives "war machine" a whole new meaning. Wielding a knife at first, he makes his killings up close and personal, but don't worry when he gets a hold of that Gatling Gun, no one is safe. Body parts are detached, heads roll and Rambo ends up on top. There are moments when the only thing we can do as an audience is laugh. We are not laughing because it is funny but because how else can one react to that much over the top carnage. It is not a movie for everyone, but it knows its audiences and it will take that specific audience in a time machine and them all believe it is 1986 all over again!

Final Grade: C-