Rambo

I am a huge Stallone fan. Huge. I have a 5 foot Rocky Balboa poster in my room and a life-size cardboard standee of the Italian Stallion from Rocky I. I own both the Rambo & Rocky DVD box sets as well as pristine VHS copies of Judge Dredd, Cliffhanger, Demolition Man, and Cobra. As far as I am concerned Sly is the greatest action star of all time. So as much as I want to just say that this movie rules and leave it at that, I'll try to give an unbiased perspective (but I will inevitably fail).

I went into the latest and possibly last installment of the Rambo movies with extremely high hopes. I wanted to simply see Stallone tear it up one more time, and I really didn't care if there was even a decent storyline or not. I got exactly what I wanted.

The film begins with scenes depicting the sadistic violence and genocide taking place in Burma. While hundreds of innocent lives are being taken, Rambo lives a few miles down the river... catching some snakes. He appears to be completely apathetic about not only the situation most geographically relevant to him, but about the entire world itself. The journey we have seen Rambo on through the prior three movies seems to have come to an end. John has given up. He plans to live out his life in isolation.

A group of religious aid workers track down Rambo with the intention of having him give them a boat ride to their destination: Burma. After repeatedly refusing to help them, he finally but reluctantly gives in. As we see the most subdued Rambo ever guide his passengers down the river one might wonder if he has still got it. The ship is then ambushed by Burmese pirates. Rambo aint having none of that. After a quick confrontation he manages to wipe out every single crew member of the renegade ship with a hand gun. Awesome. After dropping off the workers at their destination Rambo returns to his snake hunting job and seemingly forgets about them. A few weeks later a leader from the workers' church comes looking for them. It turns out their camp was raided and they have been taken prisoner. The man has hired some mercenaries to retrieve his members and simply asks Rambo to take them to the area where he dropped the group off. Rambo agrees to help them.

This is where the classic Stallone action movie kicks in. Rambo gives a few solemn words to the audience as he sharpens the knife he has become so synonymous with. After taking the mercenaries to the shore of the invaded camp Rambo is told to stay behind with the boat and wait. Ha! Right. The most dangerous member of the most dangerous military unit who received two Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars (for Valor), four Purple Hearts, the Distinguished Service Cross and the Medal of Honor; who is highly trained in all aspects of survival, weaponry, hand-to-hand combat and guerrilla warfare is going to stay behind and watch the boat. Think again mercenaries, Rambo bout to show ya how it's done! And he does just that.

Rambo leads the operation successfully extracting the majority of the prisoners and practically annihilating the entire Burmese armed forces. The film is not quite as Rambo-centric as it's predecessors. It focuses on each of the individual rescuers as well. This change in direction however, does not hinder Rambo's ability to have an all time high kill-count (83 on screen kills) in one movie. As he spends some of the last scenes behind a machine gun mowing down row after row of the enemy I couldn't help but smile and remember why I love Stallone. He knows how it's done. He wrote the book on it. The final scene in Rambo shows our hero finally completing his journey. After years of being a man without a country, maybe he will eventually find solace in the only place aside from a war zone that he has ever called home.

Stallone has definitely brought his acting to a level far beyond what most would expect from him. He has proved to be a pretty solid director as well. I think I liked the conclusion of the Rocky series a little bit more, but it was still a great resolution (maybe) to a great icon.

3.5/5 Stars