Welcome Back Rambo!

[slugbelch]

 

 

Fellas,

 

 

 

This film is a masterpiece of mayhem that I, nor anyone else that I can imagine would have ever dreamed of.

 

 

 

You ever watch those serious survival films, like THE KILLING FIELDS and HOTEL RWANDA, and you see these horrible and vile human beings committing these heinous acts of violence against innocent people, and just think to yourself "someone needs to come by and rip this guy's face right off his skull....slowly"? Well, beg no more, because Sly heard you and he's going to make all your wishes and dreams of sinful vengeance and satisfaction come true. He's "gonna give you a war you won't believe."

 

 

 

The Rambo saga picks up about 20 years after we last saw Rambo in Soviet territory siding with the Afghan rebels to rescue his old superior, Col. Troutman. Rambo now resides on the outskirts of Burma, where he's distanced from the world's longest running Civil War, but not too far that he feels uncomfortable in a completely peaceful environment. He spends his days now capturing deadly snakes to sell, bow-and-arrow fishing, and fine tuning his skills as a blacksmith. That is until his days of solitude are interrupted by a group of American volunteer workers looking to lend a hand to the impoverished people of Burma, and they need Rambo's assistance to get to the village.

 

 

 

Eventually, Rambo is convinced to help and defies his better judgment, thanks in large part to his soft spot for women with ambition, and he helps them all get to the village. Once he leaves the Burmese military comes to wreck the parade, annihilates the village and villagers, and takes the Americans captive. Rambo's survival and combat skills are once again in dire need.

 

 

 

The one initially surprising element of this film is Stallone's treatment of the Burmese horrors, because it is raw and completely unflinching. The comparisons earlier to films like THE KILLING FIELDS weren't hyperbole, Stallone holds back absolutely nothing in regards to the massacre material. Nobody is safe, not the women, children, nor animals and when he shows the monstrosities he makes every effort to make it seem as real, and as shocking as possible. It's the perfect kind of setup to Rambo's vindication later, and we just have to wait and see if he puts the men in the world of hurt that we feel they deserve. As the film progresses and the stakes are raised when the Americans are captured we find out that a world of hurt is precisely what Rambo has in mind.

 

 

 

The last 30 or so minutes of the film is a pure adrenoline rush, and Rambo goes on the kind of rampage that most American audiences are not used to seeing. I'm talking mountains of bodies of guys that have been splattered, sprayed, dismembered, decapitated, dethroated, exploded, severed, and any other adjective you can come up with to describe someone dying in very unpeaceful ways. He takes the R-Rating to its absolute limits, and I'm completely shocked that it got one. He seriously grabs that letter by the throat and squeezes every ounce of allowable material that he can from it. If you felt satisfied by the hard R from 300, you really have no idea what's in store for you.

 

 

 

If it wasn't for the heavy-hearted material shown earlier in the film of what kind of monsters the Burmese military really are then the splatterfest to come later on would've come across as 100% over the top and unnecesarily gratuitous. However, because of our own desire to see the men die horribly, Sly's approach to the violence is welcomed with open arms. This is what we wanted, whether we feel happy about it or not. This film puts on display the id of a vengeful soldier, and even the passive people in the audience may find it difficult not to at least quietly cheer as Rambo goes on a tear. This is really the perfect film to truly test the mindset of the kind of person that feels violence is never the answer, and that it solves absolutely nothing.

 

 

 

One could sit and talk about the moral questions that lurk through the action from time to time during the movie, but quite honestly nobody is going to remember them. You've seen them in the trailer, and that's all there is. They're visibly in the distance when you recall back on the film because of how graphic the rest of the film is. This is the kind of action/war film you might've seen coming from the Paul Verhoeven in the late 80s through the 90s, but not from Sly.

 

 

 

This is probably the first time I'd say that the director didn't make the film, the character did. John Rambo made this picture, not Sly because this level of surprise and shock could only come from the most iconically disturbed Vietnam vet that cinema has introduced us to.

 

 

 

[RyanbabZ71]

awesome cant wait to see it!