Friday, February 22, 2008

Rambo or How one man killed an entire army


Sylvester Stallone is back, after an impressive return to the screen with Rocky Balboa, expectations were high for his follow-up role- Don't be afraid- Rambo delivers the Goods. We last saw John Rambo 20 years ago (Yes! 1988- I wasn't even born when Rambo III was released), In 1988 Rambo was fighting in the Afghan desert, In 2008, he's still fighting, this time in the jungles of Burma.
A 61 year old Sylvester Stallone, wrote, produced and directed this new movie, known simply as Rambo.
This movie is not for the faint hearted, if you are easily upset by gore, blod, violence, shooting, bombs, loud noises or cheesy lines like: Live for nothing or Die for something, then this movie is not for you. I mean with a tagline that reads: Heroes Never Die...They Just Reload, you are not expecting Oscar performances, you are expecting Vietnam Vet John Rambo to kill all the bad guys with as little effort as possible, sustaining only minor injuries (usually to the arm or shoulder)
As soon as the movie starts the action starts, we are greeted with actual footage from the humanitarian crisis in Burma, then we see Burmese soldiers gratuitously killing off poor villagers in paddy fields.
The plot is easy to explain, a group of Christian missionaries go to help the Burmese people, they get captured by the Burmese army, Rambo and a bunch of mercenaries (yes Rambo is a bit old so he can't do it all by himself) come and save the day.
As I said before, this movie is gory, we see children being shot at close range, women being raped, heads impaled on sticks, flies buzzing over rotten corpses. Forget about the first three Rambo films, this one is the most realistic, and it brings the crisis in Burma to contemporary audiences in an unconventional manner.
The characters are polarized in this movie, Rambo is presented as a good guy, giving fish to monks, helping people cross the river in his boat, while the Burmese soldiers are total maniacs, amoral, wild, almost demonic. The people that need saving are of course- "Good Christian Missionaries"...who also happen to be annoyingly naive. Enter Rambo, we see him pull out a man's adams apple, blow up half of the Burmese jungle, disembowel the leader, and kill off most of the Burmese army armed with a 50 calibre machine gun! Rambo's dialogue, as usual is minimal, consisting mainly of, "Go Home".."Go Home".."Let's Go".."Go!"...but that's what we like about him, he doesn't talk the talk, but he damn sure shoots the shots!...with a body count numbering in the hundreds (most of them dying in the hands of Rambo) this movie, brings you a 'realistic' portrayal of war..assuming Rambo is indestructible.
The moral of the story is:

"You can run, you can hide, But, Rambo will Kill you!"

1 comment:

Adiba said...

so def not a movie for Laura right? haha I see ur pimping up your blog...nice