Rambo

When Sylvester Stallone finally said goodbye to Rocky at the tail end of 2006 he filled not only a very personal void, but also closed a defining chapter in the life of a much loved cinema hero. Rocky Balboa revealed Stallone as a man of humility, a man who had let go of his ego and embraced life with a keener sense of wisdom. The sixth instalment, not without one or two hitches, was an emotionally satisfying conclusion to everyone’s favourite boxing champion, and it gave its director a firm idea as to where he’d head next. Rambo might have seemed all the more ridiculous; a sixty one year-old Vietnam veteran running around the jungle blowing up warring Asians could have indeed served embarrassment to one of the world’s greatest action stars, but then certainly no more so than the likes of Stop or My Mom Will Shoot and the catastrophic Rocky V. Indeed the aforementioned film gave Stallone a much needed kick up the arse, which fuelled his desire to bring his creation around full circle with utmost sincerity and respect. Much in the same manner, so too does the fourth entry in his Rambo franchise see his character reach a genuine catharsis.

John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) is living a secluded life in Thailand, spending his days out of harm’s reach and making a living from selling snakes and machine parts. His past is about to come back and haunt him when a team of Christian missionaries led by Michael Burnett (Paul Schulze) and Sarah Miller (Julie Benz) ask for him to lend his boating services in order to take them further up stream into war-torn Burma so that they can attend to the poor and needy. After trying to deter them, Rambo eventually agrees and manages to successfully get them to their destination. However, ten days pass and there has been no further word from the group, on account of them being kidnapped by Major Tint (Maung Maung Khin) and his evil cohorts in the village of Karen. Rambo is soon visited by Reverend Marsh (Ken Howard), who implores him to head back into Burmese territory, along with a crew of rag-tag mercenaries in a fierce rescue bid. And so Rambo sets out, ready to unleash hell on all the baddies.

The opening few minutes of Rambo is harrowing stuff, as reels of stock footage is played before our eyes, illustrating the awful atrocities that have taken place in Burma for the past sixty years, and much of which has seemed to have gone on unnoticed amidst other world crisis. It’s interesting to note that Stallone pitches his film as two halves of an apple, with one half being rotten, but in a profound kinda way…Not sure where I’m going with that. True enough his intentions are well grounded and the film does indeed make you think, even if it’s just for a short moment; there are scenes during the first half that are quite uncomfortable to watch, due to most of the people maimed being innocent men, women and children, and it’s not until John Rambo fires an arrow into the chest of a Burmese soldier does the film then transform into an unashamed action flick, where all the baddies get their just desserts and we can cheer on the exploding heads from here on in. But that’s all part of Stallone’s genius - he knows exactly what the audience wants and expects of him, while staying true to the core of his characters. He makes his point fleetingly and then launches his vicious attack with full assurance. Rambo is as nasty and violent as it’s been made out to be, the violence serves its multiple purpose and at the end of the day everybody’s happy. Stallone states that he wants us to look away from the gore, but how can we really? It’s a sensory overload, one of sheer fixation which prevents us from turning our heads in disgust. I’m not sure he’s really failed in his mission - of which he seems concerned - so much as staged it in a horrifying enough manner that it peaks all of our curiosities. And I’ll be damned if he doesn’t know how to stage a scene. It’s a fantastic looking picture through and through, and in this day and age of action cinema it’s nice to actually be able to see what’s going on and less of that ‘realistic’ shaky cam nonsense - though I should note there’s a bit of shaky-cam, albeit restrained.

Rambo is a case of excess more than anything else, which sees its director mix his priorities a little. On one hand it’s gloriously violent and for that I already love it to bits, but on the other it’s contestable that the majority of characters and the story itself lacks any real personality. Aside from John Rambo’s own inner turmoil, complete with a very effectively edited montage of his past outings which squeezes out a little character development, the man has surrounded himself with a bunch of dull saps. The missionaries moan a lot and Michael Burnett is damn annoying to the point you actually want him to die and see Rambo head off into the sunset with the girl he so obviously seems to lust after in Sarah Miller, while the mercenaries are nothing more than cardboard cut-outs. But who am I kidding? Point is, there could have been more to the director‘s desire in making a sturdier tale over ninety minutes. Stallone isn’t an overly descriptive director; looking as far back as the mid-eighties - and sticking with his most famed franchises - his films usually get from A-Z and without any kind of LMNOP. Rocky 4 for example had about twenty pages of script and a billion musical montages; similarly Rocky Balboa did a lot of glossing over its middle act, while Rambo 2 & 3 (not directed by him) were nothing more than porn violence - not that I‘m knocking it, each one is ruthlessly entertaining in its own way.

It’s nice to see Rambo back on our screens though; he really has been missed, and Stallone looks absolutely great as the weathered hero. I do respect Sylvester Stallone a great deal. I think he has a genuinely brilliant mind and he’s certainly a sincere and well spoken individual. He’s to be applauded for bringing back the kind of action we’ve lacked on our screens for so long, and even address relevant world topics with such rare passion; its social context sees it as being just as relevant as First Blood was back in the day, yet Rambo isn’t quite as deep and multi-layered as the director would like you to believe. What it is, however, is a stonking good piece of film which injects a much needed spell of life into a withering genre. For this old-school eighties enthusiast, this is what action cinema is all about. More of the same please.