Rambo (**1/4)

Following by a few months the revival of his long-dormant Rocky franchise, Sylvester Stallone has done the same for action hero John Rambo. The simple title of this numberless fourth entry might suggest Stallone, who directed, was intending to recapture the feel of the beginning of the series, as with Rocky Balboa. But no, this is much more the straight action movie of the second and third films than the character drama of the original First Blood. As the story begins, the gruff, incredibly buff Rambo is a snake wrangler in Thailand who’s persuaded to escort some missionaries up the river to neighboring Burma. Thanks to brutal footage that precedes the opening credits, we already know about the government soldiers who have been brutalizing the countryside, hunting for rebels.

Stallone has called this an antiwar movie, but the anti-violence missionary leader comes off as a well-meaning but naive nincompoop. Rambo himself has become fatalistic and so does not interfere in the mission, but when the spectre of white womanhood being violated arises, his remaining shred of idealism is awakened. “Live for nothing or die for something,” as he puts it, thus expending a good portion of his dialogue. We are meant to deplore the soldiers’ thirst for violence, while at the same time the movie’s raison d’etre would seem to be to satisfy the audience’s thirst for violence. This is accomplished with stunning savagery, as Rambo and a team of mercenaries, but mostly Rambo, machine gun, stab, slice, chop, strangle and (it appeared) nuke their way through hundreds of mostly interchangeable baddies. Disemboweling one of the soldiers, Rambo’s delight seems to match their earlier debauchery. But hey, he’s a good guy, delivering the goods.

IMDB link

reviewed 1/27/08