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Review: Rambo
RAMBO (B)
As I eased into my seat to watch Sylvester Stallone crack some skulls in Rambo -- the first Rambo movie in twenty years -- I'll admit to feeling a bit giddy. A blast of 1980s excess is exactly what the slumping action genre needs right now, if you ask me. To paraphrase the old John Candy SCTV character -- I wanted to see everything get blowed up real good. So you can imagine my surprise when the film opened with a montage of real-life footage documenting atrocities in Burma. And this is serious stuff -- we're talking slaughtered women and children here. Quickly, my excitement turned to discomfort and disgust. But just as I was preparing to mount my high horse and cry "Exploitation!," I started to get excited again. Because I knew that Rambo was going to get the bastards responsible.
It's an uneasy reaction, but that's what Rambo does! Whether he's standing up to authority in First Blood, symbolically winning the Vietnam War for America in Part II, or saving Afghanistan from the Soviets (ah, how times have changed!) in Rambo III, Rambo's job is to take the action that no one else will. And it can be pretty exhilarating to watch. In interviews, Stallone (who also wrote and directed Rambo) has said he hopes the new film will force people to take note of the civil war raging in Burma. But let's be honest here -- the guy's using an immeasurably tragic situation to make his action movie more effective. And distasteful as it may be -- it works.
To read my full Cinematical review of Rambo, CLICK HERE.
For more highbrow fare, CLICK HERE to read my Write Stuff interview with Band of Brothers and A Mighty Heart screenwriter, John Orloff.
Happy Friday!
read your Rambo review: "poor man's Jason Statham" was great. I remember a
simpler time in my life...playing the "poor mans" game for hours on end...
Haven't had a chance to check it out yet, but I hear this installment is
the most brutal of them all. I remember on one of the TV Spots seeing Rambo
turning around a jeep-mounted .50cal machine gun and unloading pointblank
onto the people in the jeep.
Man yeah I saw RAMBO last night in a little double feature with THERE WILL
BE BLOOD (agreed that it was overrated, and was actually rather
disappointed, and hardly think it deserves the Oscar hype it's garnered).
RAMBO was tight as hell though, good review.
Oh yeah, and I thought you'd appreciate this: I just described the violence
in RAMBO to my co-worker as (wait for it...) "over the top."
I can't help it, I'm just not a Rambo girl. I wasn't a Rocky chick either.
Basically, I never understood why (and I'm really dating myself here) when
I saw Staying Alive and during the opening credits they had a shot of Sly
walking down the street in some pimpy looking fur coat all the girls in the
theater screamed and clapped. Sly is not hawt. He's kind of icky. But he
did actually give me one of the biggest laughs of my life when he and
Sharon Stone had that shower sex scene in that awful movie I can't remember
the name of .....yikes. Oh, and I actually liked Cliffhanger.
Brown,