image © Sony Pictures
Rambo picks up with our hero living deep in the jungles of north Thailand. Unwilling to return home to what the movie implies is the ‘civilized’ world, Rambo spends his days fishing and catching poisonous snakes. His retreat is disturbed when a misplaced group of missionaries ask the disillusioned former veteran to take them upriver into war-torn Burma. He refuses, but is taken with a number of pretty words from the equally pretty, but painfully naïve, Sarah (Julie Benz). When they’re captured by militants, his conscience forces him to set out on a recovery mission into the Burmese danger zone, accompanied by a gang of smart-mouthed mercenaries.
At 61-years old, writer and director Sly Stallone’s Rambo is as much ancient Greek hero as he is grizzled Vietnam vet. His solitary life has been formed by his aversion to war, but the ultra-violence dwells deep within, beneath the sunken eyelids (“When you’re pushed, killing’s as easy as breathin’”). He rises to the occasion beautifully, even forging his own sword and arrows in a truly Conan-esque moment full of mythic suggestion. Julie Benz does a passable job as the idealistic missionary Sarah, despite the extreme corniness of her pseudo-philosophical dialogue.
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image © Sony Pictures
The plot itself unfolds in an exciting, albeit formulaic fashion. The heroes, victims and villains are black and white. The archetypal “bad guy” - Burmese Major Tint (Muang Muang Khin), is flagged unsubtly by his ominous, reflective aviators and ever-smouldering cigarettes (oh, and the endless indiscriminate killing). At points it feels like the script was ripped straight from Sly’s other comeback Rocky Balboa. Imagine: an aging hero returns from retirement to his former glory for one last hurrah—he overcomes adversity and saves the day at the very last moment. What an extremely novel idea!
Be warned: Rambo is hard to stomach at times. The gore reaches an unexpected, almost cartoonish level as the body count surpasses its predecessors. Within the first few moments, you see frightened people vaporized in clouds of blood by land mines. In slow motion, the mechanics of bullets play out onscreen as they rip through the heads and limbs of men, women and children. Audiences have seldom been left quite so shell-shocked.
What’s most disturbing is that these horrifying events are based on the present situation in Burma. In looking at scripts for the film, Stallone felt that he wanted to explore an actual conflict—shedding light on real political strife. Though these atrocities make it impossible to tear away the eyes, they desensitize the audience to such an extent that the humanitarian crisis (one of the world’s worst) is almost forgotten. As an action movie, Rambo is in line with everything we expect from the genre. As a political statement, it fails miserably—making light of a horrible situation instead of shedding light. Rambo III tried to politicize the series in Afghanistan and failed. This does the same, pumping up the bloodshed until we’re numb, and a little bored.
The same old Rambo with an enormous bodycount – ultimately ineffective.
Rex
