I'm a huge fan of FIRST BLOOD and as a kid, loved the 2nd one. The 3rd one blows, so we'll pretend it never existed and this one is actually the end of "The John Rambo Trilogy". So how was the 4th outing?Wow, what an experience!
Overall, I thought it kicked ass!!
RAMBO operates on several layers, often times overlapping one another. It's an amalgam of realistic brutal violence (Holy shit!), a semi-dramatic character piece (Rambo) with a touch of Hollywood cliche sprinkled in here and there; The Mercenaries he encounters are embarrassingly bad.
The glue that binds it all together is Rambo, who is rock solid. Stallone really brings the character back to the FIRST BLOOD days and moves him forward to age 61(who's still in great shape!). Gone is the cartoon character he became in Part II and the abyssmal Part III. I love the old Rambo!! The other constant throughout the film is the full-metal jacket bloodshed (holy shit!), that pushes the R-rating well into NC-17 in my opinion. If "Saving Private Ryan" gore and/or "Casion" violence upset you, then RAMBO will be hard to sit through at times.
Stallone walks a razor line of bringing about awareness to the real-life atrocities in Burma, and exploiting it for the sake of an Action Movie. But, overall it was quite an entertaining ride with moments of squeemish and moments of badass action. It's a nice bookend to FIRST BLOOD.
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4 comments:
I agree with a lot of what you said, but I thought the Mercs were good in the fact that they were 'super tough' until they realized what they were up against. In my opinion, there was First Blood and then Rambo...number 2 and three were merely bad dreams I had after too much vodka.
And really, how did that movie not get an NC 17? Not that I'm complaining.
I agree, Allen, about the Mercs. The IDEA was there.... it was primarily the boat ride down the river when you first meet them - it was too cliche to the point of laughter. But once the arrived at the village (and on), they were cool.
I LOVE the 2nd one, but its more like a comic book movie for me... I always thought of it as Stallone's "COMMANDO". It simply lacked the heart that First Blood had. Still, its one of may favs!!!!
Ha, and yeah... PTIII was horrible!
Yeah...the singing was BAD...total cliche...could have done without the entire boat ride...
Re: the 'rescue of the blonde' that you mentioned in the extended critique...I, at first, was bothered by it. But then Rambo really didn't care about the other guys (ignorant missionaries) that much..he showed no concern to the guy whose legs were gnawed off by the pigs...but he did show remorse at not being able to stop the "General-pervert" from molesting the young boy. He almost rescued him. Had he done that, he would not have been able to rescue the woman who was the first person in years (perhaps since the asian chick in the second film) to touch his humanity.
I really wanted him to go back to the village and slaughter the bastards who were raping the girls and lighting up the smoke grenades and generally being sub human scum.
I thought that the final scene really closed the book on Rambo and I hope Stallone ends it there.
Great review!
Yeah, exactly!
I wrestled with that (just going for the blonde). In the end, I landed on this: He was never about saving the day... his philosphy had reached the point of nothing matters - you can't change anything. His sole mission was to rescue HER and her alone - to make a difference on some level, which was her argument for going in. So in relation to his story, she helps him come back from giving up on the World. A great ending to the film and Rambo's story!!!
But yeah, I really wanted him to go back and save everyone. But that would have defeated the character arc and returned him back to his previous-sequel days... hauling ass in on a copter and laying waste, etc.
Also, by NOT going back and saving everyone else, you leave thinking abou them... and in turn, perhaps, about those in Burma in real life. To have him go back would have been another hollywood cliche ending.
Maybe I'm over thinking this... but hey, a Rambo film has had me thinking for the past week-plus! Sweet.
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