Rambo
Release Date: January 25th, 2007
Directed, Written, and Starring: Sylvester Stallone
I love action movies. I watch and enjoy a lot of action movies I have no right to enjoy. I was not born a child of the 80s where action movies reigned supreme, so nostalgia is not a factor. I am not a person who always lets action movies pass with a high score just because of the action. I think the main reason I enjoy action movies is simply because I like seeing the "good guy" beat up the "bad guy". Simple as that. In the past year I have found that two of my favorite action series were getting sequels. In the summer of 2007 we got Live Free or Die Hard but there was a big problem. A sequel to Die Hard, one of the most violent and foul mouthed series in the action genre, was slapped with a (studio demanded of course) PG-13 rating. Something had gone horribly wrong. Die Hard couldn't be PG-13, it just couldn't. So we all held our breath in July when it was released. To my surprise, it was actually good. Despite the rating Live Free or Die Hard still managed to keep that Die Hard spirit of John McClane beating up the bad guys and talking smack. If anything the PG-13 rating is forgiven with the unrated version which adds in many of the f-words that fans wanted. Around the time right before the release of Live Free or Die Hard, it was known that Sylvester Stallone was making yet another Rambo film. A clip leaked onto the internet, it was brutally violent, in particular Rambo performing a decapitation and making a person explode all in one fell swoop. Rambo was not abandoning it's R-rated roots, if anything it was upping the ante on the level of violence seen in the series, little did we know...
The Rambo series isn't exactly the most respected series in the world, so far it has taken advantage of three serious situations (Vietnam veterans post traumatic stress, POW camps, and Soviets attacking Afghanistan) and used them to give an excuse for Rambo killing people. This time around Rambo is living on the Burmese border in Thailand, apparently catching snakes for an odd job. For those that don't know Burma(Myanmar is it's current name) Since 1948 there has been a civil war going on between Karen rebels and the Burmese military, but as the film states the war is more like a genocide. The story begins with a large platoon of Burmese soldiers working their way through villages, doing various horrible crimes against the Karen villagers. Right before we are treated to fictional horrors, we are subjected to seeing real life news footage of Burma. We see dead bodies rotting in the street, people being shot, and children being beaten in the streets. Wow, aren't Rambo movies supposed to be fun to watch? So immediately after this news footage, we get to see our "villian" and his soldiers play a game of "bet on which villager can cross the mine field without blowing up." The reason I put quotations on villian is because he is barely existent in this movie. He never speaks, never emotes, it seems his only job is to stand around and smoke a cigar while his soldiers do horrible things. So we finally get to Rambo, who is catching snakes for a living. Apparently Rambo lives in a hut of some sort with no bed, and some random work tools lying around. Our time with Rambo's introduction is short lived, because of course we have to get back to the killing of innocent villagers. So after another scene showing the horrors of war, such as children being thrown into fires, we finally get to find out what the story is about.
Rambo is approached by a group of christian missionaries from Colarado, they want him to take them into Burma, to "help" the Karen villagers. Help is a strong word though, it is almost as if the missionaries did zero research before coming all the way to Thailand. Even Rambo thinks they are stupid. "Are you bringing any weapons?" he says like the answer isn't obvious "Of course not" the balding white missionary with the familiar face says. "Then you aren't changing anything" This is a rare occasion, Rambo sharing dialouge with a person. This has to be the only movie I have seen where the main character has so few bits of dialouge. It gets worse when the action really picks up, and Rambo doesn't speak a single word for the last 15 or so minutes of the movie. Nonetheless, Rambo has never been about the dialouge, which what little this movie has, is already pretty bad, so if anythimg I am almost relieved that there is so little of it. After some convincing from a pretty blonde missionary, Rambo decides to take them into Burma anyway. Along the way he kills some pirates that attack their boat and when the missionaries question him he hiliariously and indecipherably shouts "WHO ARE YOU!? WHO ARE ANY OF YOU!?" The crowd burst into laughter at this point.
So of course the missionaries get to the Karen village, and of course the village is attacked by the military. This is the first time we really see the movies violence in full force, while the villagers seem to die less violently than others (with a few exceptions) the missionaries seem to be filled with kerosene and hamburger meat and provide some hilarious explosions. So now, Rambo has to save the day, by way of a preacher from the church in Colorado, he teams up with a group of foul-mouthed mercenaries who provide the weakest dialouge of the movie, and also the worst acting. The missionaries have been captured and taken to the military base, so Rambo and the mercenaries have to make their way to the base, killing all along the way, get the missionaries out, THEN head all the way back to Rambo's boat. I thought the violence for the deaths of the missionaries were funny, but all of the really gory explosions and deaths are saved for the evil soldiers. We see heads explode, land mines go off, arrow impalements, and a claymore explosion that could probably kill an entire forest. There are some distinctly disturbing moments, such as a scene that implies rape of several village women at once, but instead of saving them Rambo goes after the one white blonde missionary. Some characters die, Rambo never emotes, and neither do we. The film essentially builds up to a big 10 minute finale inwhich Rambo takes charge of a mounted turret and proceeds to kill the entire platoon of soldiers. He saves the last kill for the villian, but I am not sure how he even knows who the villian is.
The ending is a nice homage to the very beginning of First Blood but it attempts to portray a big emotional character choice, that essentially comes from nothing except one line of dialouge from that blonde missionary that convinced Rambo to go to Burma and caused the whole mess in the first place. I am not sure where Rambo gets off showing us real footage of Burma, when it really has no message to convey except that if Rambo was a real person, he would kill a lot of soldiers, and not really solve the conflict at all. So it is here that I realize what really makes an action movie, it is not soley the action, it is the purposes of the action and how the main character reacts to things around him. In the Die Hard series John McClane is a wisecracking bugs bunny type, Rambo barely says anything and when he does it is a cynical statement about how messed up the world is. This is not an action movie, its more like a very violent politcal powerpoint.
5.8/10
Release Date: January 25th, 2007
Directed, Written, and Starring: Sylvester Stallone
I love action movies. I watch and enjoy a lot of action movies I have no right to enjoy. I was not born a child of the 80s where action movies reigned supreme, so nostalgia is not a factor. I am not a person who always lets action movies pass with a high score just because of the action. I think the main reason I enjoy action movies is simply because I like seeing the "good guy" beat up the "bad guy". Simple as that. In the past year I have found that two of my favorite action series were getting sequels. In the summer of 2007 we got Live Free or Die Hard but there was a big problem. A sequel to Die Hard, one of the most violent and foul mouthed series in the action genre, was slapped with a (studio demanded of course) PG-13 rating. Something had gone horribly wrong. Die Hard couldn't be PG-13, it just couldn't. So we all held our breath in July when it was released. To my surprise, it was actually good. Despite the rating Live Free or Die Hard still managed to keep that Die Hard spirit of John McClane beating up the bad guys and talking smack. If anything the PG-13 rating is forgiven with the unrated version which adds in many of the f-words that fans wanted. Around the time right before the release of Live Free or Die Hard, it was known that Sylvester Stallone was making yet another Rambo film. A clip leaked onto the internet, it was brutally violent, in particular Rambo performing a decapitation and making a person explode all in one fell swoop. Rambo was not abandoning it's R-rated roots, if anything it was upping the ante on the level of violence seen in the series, little did we know...
The Rambo series isn't exactly the most respected series in the world, so far it has taken advantage of three serious situations (Vietnam veterans post traumatic stress, POW camps, and Soviets attacking Afghanistan) and used them to give an excuse for Rambo killing people. This time around Rambo is living on the Burmese border in Thailand, apparently catching snakes for an odd job. For those that don't know Burma(Myanmar is it's current name) Since 1948 there has been a civil war going on between Karen rebels and the Burmese military, but as the film states the war is more like a genocide. The story begins with a large platoon of Burmese soldiers working their way through villages, doing various horrible crimes against the Karen villagers. Right before we are treated to fictional horrors, we are subjected to seeing real life news footage of Burma. We see dead bodies rotting in the street, people being shot, and children being beaten in the streets. Wow, aren't Rambo movies supposed to be fun to watch? So immediately after this news footage, we get to see our "villian" and his soldiers play a game of "bet on which villager can cross the mine field without blowing up." The reason I put quotations on villian is because he is barely existent in this movie. He never speaks, never emotes, it seems his only job is to stand around and smoke a cigar while his soldiers do horrible things. So we finally get to Rambo, who is catching snakes for a living. Apparently Rambo lives in a hut of some sort with no bed, and some random work tools lying around. Our time with Rambo's introduction is short lived, because of course we have to get back to the killing of innocent villagers. So after another scene showing the horrors of war, such as children being thrown into fires, we finally get to find out what the story is about.
Rambo is approached by a group of christian missionaries from Colarado, they want him to take them into Burma, to "help" the Karen villagers. Help is a strong word though, it is almost as if the missionaries did zero research before coming all the way to Thailand. Even Rambo thinks they are stupid. "Are you bringing any weapons?" he says like the answer isn't obvious "Of course not" the balding white missionary with the familiar face says. "Then you aren't changing anything" This is a rare occasion, Rambo sharing dialouge with a person. This has to be the only movie I have seen where the main character has so few bits of dialouge. It gets worse when the action really picks up, and Rambo doesn't speak a single word for the last 15 or so minutes of the movie. Nonetheless, Rambo has never been about the dialouge, which what little this movie has, is already pretty bad, so if anythimg I am almost relieved that there is so little of it. After some convincing from a pretty blonde missionary, Rambo decides to take them into Burma anyway. Along the way he kills some pirates that attack their boat and when the missionaries question him he hiliariously and indecipherably shouts "WHO ARE YOU!? WHO ARE ANY OF YOU!?" The crowd burst into laughter at this point.
So of course the missionaries get to the Karen village, and of course the village is attacked by the military. This is the first time we really see the movies violence in full force, while the villagers seem to die less violently than others (with a few exceptions) the missionaries seem to be filled with kerosene and hamburger meat and provide some hilarious explosions. So now, Rambo has to save the day, by way of a preacher from the church in Colorado, he teams up with a group of foul-mouthed mercenaries who provide the weakest dialouge of the movie, and also the worst acting. The missionaries have been captured and taken to the military base, so Rambo and the mercenaries have to make their way to the base, killing all along the way, get the missionaries out, THEN head all the way back to Rambo's boat. I thought the violence for the deaths of the missionaries were funny, but all of the really gory explosions and deaths are saved for the evil soldiers. We see heads explode, land mines go off, arrow impalements, and a claymore explosion that could probably kill an entire forest. There are some distinctly disturbing moments, such as a scene that implies rape of several village women at once, but instead of saving them Rambo goes after the one white blonde missionary. Some characters die, Rambo never emotes, and neither do we. The film essentially builds up to a big 10 minute finale inwhich Rambo takes charge of a mounted turret and proceeds to kill the entire platoon of soldiers. He saves the last kill for the villian, but I am not sure how he even knows who the villian is.
The ending is a nice homage to the very beginning of First Blood but it attempts to portray a big emotional character choice, that essentially comes from nothing except one line of dialouge from that blonde missionary that convinced Rambo to go to Burma and caused the whole mess in the first place. I am not sure where Rambo gets off showing us real footage of Burma, when it really has no message to convey except that if Rambo was a real person, he would kill a lot of soldiers, and not really solve the conflict at all. So it is here that I realize what really makes an action movie, it is not soley the action, it is the purposes of the action and how the main character reacts to things around him. In the Die Hard series John McClane is a wisecracking bugs bunny type, Rambo barely says anything and when he does it is a cynical statement about how messed up the world is. This is not an action movie, its more like a very violent politcal powerpoint.
5.8/10
2 comments:
10/10 whats your problem nathan
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