Photo Supplied

Up Yours, Lions For Lambs! | Sylvester Stallone blows stuff up and makes you think (but mostly blows stuff up) in Rambo.

RAMBO
Written and directed by Sylvester Stallone. Starring Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz, Maung Maung Khin. Now playing.
3 Stars

As a kid, I was a Rambo freak. I can remember sneaking in to see Rambo III, terrified of getting caught but desperate to see Rambo blow the shit out of something. I dressed up as Rambo for Halloween three years in a row. So in celebration of the new Rambo movie, I felt I had to immerse myself in the entire franchise again. I wanted to recapture that prepubescent hormone rush I felt when I first saw Rambo stab a Russian in the chest. Try to remember what caused me to hang a poster of Sly, all oiled and ripped, above my bed... I’m sure my parents had their theories. 

So, five and a half hours of booby-trapped, exploding-arrowhead goodness later, I remembered two things about the war-filled world of John Rambo. 

(1) How cartoonish the violence is. Rewatching the ’80s flicks reminded me more of Tom and Jerry than anything involving flesh-and-blood humans. 

(2) How totally lame they are. Even the overrated original, First Blood, is terribly dated and plodding. The sequels (Rambo: First Blood Part II and Rambo III) are nearly unwatchable.

This discovery made me sad. It was like learning the truth about Santa—it shocked me to the core, but secretly, deep down, I always knew the truth. Maybe my depression came from the realization that I liked crap movies. Needless to say, after my Rambo-thon, I was not looking forward to Stallone’s return visit to his old franchise. 

It was a pleasant surprise, in a way, to find that this 21st Century Rambo is a horse of a different colour—this one far more arterial. More Headline News than action flick. 

John Rambo now lives the solitary life of a cobra wrangler on the rivers of Vietnam. Solitude is the only thing keeping the bad memories at bay. His quiet “retirement” is disturbed by a group of Christian missionaries looking for a ride upriver towards war-torn Burma. The missionaries, led by Sarah and Michael (Julie Benz and Paul Schulze), have come to bring medicine to the Karen, a real-life Burmese tribe facing obliteration as a result of the more than 30-year civil war being waged between the Burmese military and factions of Karen rebels. 

Initially reticent about getting involved, Rambo agrees to take them to their destination. At first thankful for his help, the Christians soon see Rambo’s true colours as he cold-bloodedly disposes of a group of river pirates. His kind of help is something that they can do without... that is, until they wind up in the middle an attack on the village by the Burmese military, led by the brutal Major Pa Tee Tint (a haunting, English-free performance by Maung Maung Khin). Feeling responsible for having left them to fend for themselves, Rambo joins up with a group of mercenaries hired by the missionaries’ church. The rest of the plot will seem pretty familiar to anyone who has seen any of the previous entries. It’s the delivery that brings all the surprises. 

The level of intensity in the action scenes is comparable to movies like Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down. No joke: the atrocities are brutal and filmed in amazing detail. Hard not to watch but impossible to un-see. Faint-of-heart viewers beware; we’re talking Faces of Death kind of stuff.

If anything, I’ve got to take my hat off to Stallone for making a truly ballsy movie. Not for a second does it shy away from the acts of cruelty found in the unpublicized wars that are fought all over the world. Action movie fans and Rambo franchise lovers may not be ready for the truths that Rambo alludes to, but I guarantee you more people will see this movie in its opening weekend than will see a “hard-hitting” political film like Redacted during its entire run in theatres and DVD. Rambo’s ultimate message is impossible to ignore.