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Rambo
(2008)
I'll be honest—Sylvester Stallone movies,
especially the Rambo series, have always been a guilty
pleasure of mine. It's hard, though, to recognize them as
quality cinema, and justifying unnecessary sequels is even
harder to do. Similar
to his resurrection in 2006 of the Rocky franchise, Rambo brings
Vietnam War vet John Rambo back from a twenty year hiatus and
proves that both the character and this kind of action movie
are no longer relevant, if they ever were.
Hiding in the remote jungles of Thailand isn't enough to keep
renegade super-soldier John Rambo (Stallone) away from the
action for too long. When a group of American missionaries
(Julie Benz, Paul Schulze) is captured by the military junta
in Burma, Rambo must once again put on his trademark red bandana and
head into the warzone, leading a half-dozen mercenaries
against an army of over a hundred. If you've never seen
a Rambo movie before this might seem a bit much, but for anyone
familiar with Stallone's signature trained killer, this is
just another nature hike.
Mushmouth Stallone is as poor an actor as ever, but that's
part and parcel of who his characters are. An articulate
Rambo just wouldn't work. This doesn't excuse his complete
lack of effort here, though, and the difference between his
performance in Rambo and First Blood is noticeable.
As much as Stallone may want us to believe that Rambo doesn't
want to get involved with war but is drawn in time and again
by either his Vietnam conditioning or his own conscience, the
change is never organic, and I've never been surprised to see
his character embrace his martial prowess in any of the films. John
Rambo might be one of the most one-dimensional characters of
all-time but surrounded by the rest of this cast, it almost
goes unnoticed.
It's like watching a first read-through of
a draft of an unfinished script with how inorganic every line
from start to finish is delivered.
A lot has changed in action films since 1988's Rambo III in
both style and graphic nature of violence. The number
of exploding heads, mutilated bodies and violent gore here
rivals Saving Private Ryan but without the emotional
or historical core. If anything, the effectiveness of the
already weak thrust of the film is lessened by the explicitness
of the violence, because the quality that makes Rambo fun
is that one must suspend disbelief
to a much higher degree than normal in order to buy the outrageous
nature of Rambo's antics. But when the film attempts to blend
unrealistic action with the very real results of violence it
creates a disconnect that neither entertains nor get across
the (I assume) desired message about the horrors of war.
Rambo attempts to make statements on the nature of
war and its impact on those who are both participants
and victims, but it exploits both to a level that the surface
is too muddy to ever get to the half-baked moral core that
Stallone is aiming for. It's just further evidence that
some things should remain dead, and one can only hope that
this is the final installment in the Rambo series. The
unsatisfying conclusion of the film seems to resolve the main
character's primary internal conflict, so hopefully Stallone
is done with him. The only question that remains is if
we'll see a sequel to Cobra next year.
-Mark
Moreland
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All contents ©
2004-2009 Thoughtsonfilm.com |
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Director:
Sylvester
Stallone
Writer: Art Monterastelli, Sylvester Stallone, David Morrell
Starring: Sylvester
Stallone , Julie Benz, Matthew Marsden, Graham McTavish, Tim Kang,
Rey Gallegos, Jake La Botz, Tim Kang, Maung Maung Khin, Paul Schulze
Distributor: Lionsgate
Runtime: 91
min
Rating: R
Release Date: January
25, 2008
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