Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
1/28/08
When they're flying high,
actors can be disdainful of franchises: who wants to play the same
characters over and over when there are all kinds of new and exciting roles
offering comparable paychecks? But once those A-list roles dry up,
they're always happy to have those iconic characters to fall back on, usually
in inferior knockoffs produced to ever-diminishing returns. Sylvester
Stallone ran his iconic Rocky and Rambo franchises into the ground in the
80's, but the characters retained their grip on our consciousness:
one the eternal underdog, the other the ultimate symbol of America's military
might. With his movie career more or less in ruins, it was no surprise
to see Stallone return to those characters. But what has come as
nothing less than a shock is that he has done so with energy, imagination
and skill that rivals his finest work. Rocky
Balboa was a gloriously heroic and thoughtful period on the character
that made Sly a star: a worthy bookend to the Best Picture of 1976.
The Rambo franchise which began in 1982 with First Blood was never
that kind of artistic enterprise, but it delivered its' share of high-octane
entertainment to 80's kids like me. Rambo, the unambitiously-titled
4th film adventure of the traumatized Vietnam vet, is an outstanding comeback
vehicle, sticking to the formula but running it with a newfound skill and
intensity. It's simple, really: set up an unjust foreign power as
bowling pins for our hero to knock over. And blow up. And disembowel.
And decapitate. Let the fun begin!
We find Rambo making a subsistence
living as a snake catcher and boat pilot in Thailand. There, he's
sought out by a group of Christian missionaries looking to bring aid to
the Burmese people, who're under the genocidal thumb of their military
government. Their leader, Michael Burnett (Paul Schulze) is a peacenik
with nothing but contempt for Rambo, and the feeling is mutual. But
another of the missionaries, Sarah (Julie Benz), appeals to his dormant
sense of purpose and persuades him to make the dangerous trip up the river
into Burma. There, he drops the missionaries off and returns home,
but soon enough those peace-loving do-gooders are in the hands of the brutal
Lt. Aye (Aung Aay Noi) and his men. The Reverend (Ken Howard) of
their church comes to visit Rambo and asks him to transport a group of
mercenaries he's hired to the site where he last saw them. Led by
the relentlessly foul-mouthed Lewis (Graham McTavish), their commitment
is limited at best, so our hero gives them a little push (at arrow-point)
and soon they've infiltrated the enemy camp and released the hostages.
But that only leaves them on the wrong side of the Burmese border with
a hundred angry troops on their tails. What's an 80's action superman
to do? Cry Havoc! And let slip the dogs of war!
There are only two words
to adequately describe the final half hour of Rambo: Holy
Shit! We've seen this formula run dozens of times with 80's action
heroes like Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Norris, but never with the kind
of makeup effects craftsmanship possible today, or the level of violence
a Saw-addled MPAA will now allow in an R-rated release. Rambo doesn't
just kill the odious Burmese soldiers, he annihilates them, sending body
parts flying in every direction in an intense assault of What They've Got
Coming the likes of which I've never seen before. What makes Rambo
so successful is how good it is at making these genocidal maniacs worthy
of this kind of punishment, and then imperiling the heroes lives just enough
that it seems not only justified but necessary. Even at the age of
62, Stallone is still a formidable action presence, and nobody's ever been
better at screaming while unloading automatic weapons fire. There's
even a newfound shading to his quieter moments, and the movie is at least
more aware than its' predecessors of the sad irony that the same experiences
that have made John Rambo a righteous killing machine have also left him
with little else to contribute to society.
Which is not to say Rambo
should be in any way confused with a drama: it's an old-school popcorn
mayhem extravaganza, and it carries both the strengths and weaknesses of
its' 80's inspiration. Chief among those strengths is the moral certainty
action movies have grown soft on. Rambo, the missionaries and even
the mercenaries are the white hats, the militia are the heels, and there's
never a moment alloted for self-doubt, understanding the other guy's side
or anything else but the use of brute force to set the world right.
Obviously, those disinclined to think that violence can ever solve anything
will be horrified, but that's what they get for accidentally wandering
into the wrong theater. Rambo's agenda may not be “Might Makes
Right”, but it's certainly “Might Allows Right”, and it makes no apologies.
The characters aren't exactly
deep, but the cast inhabits them well. I'm used to seeing Shulze
as an arrogant jerk (most notably on 24), so it's an interesting
change to see him as a morally upstanding jerk. Benz sells us the
notion that the almost angelically naive Sarah is a living, breathing person.
McTavish is a delight as a man as violently loquacious as Rambo is stoic,
while Matthew Marsden pours on the virtue as the only one of the mercenaries
interested in more than taking the money and running. Noi practically
hands you the knife to slit his throat: he's odious to the core and
that's exactly what the role demands.
The explosive climax (to
say the least: watch Rambo strap a Claymore to an unexploded WWII
bomb and unleash a practically nuclear explosion on the Burmese jungle!)
makes up for the first hour's leisurely pace. But the movie does
tend to overdo the on-screen atrocities the evil soldiers inflict upon
their victims. It's not that rape and child murder aren't primary
weapons of real-life militias in Burma and elsewhere, it's just that they
had me at “rape and child murder” and I didn't need to see quite so much
of it to be primed for the fiends' ultimate comeuppance.
Obviously, the first new
Rambo movie in 20 years is going to play to a very specific audience, and
it's hard to imagine anyone who'd be interested in it not having a ball
at Rambo. Like Rocky Balboa,
it provides a nice return to dignity for one of the seminal movie characters
of his era. But unlike Rocky, I have a sneaking suspicion this is
one old soldier who's not quite ready to fade away... |
