Lean, mean killing machine
John
Rambo’s back! Despite aging a few years, he’s in good
shape even with hair extensions, and ready right a few wrongs
in the Burma jungles in the simply titled Rambo. Bearing
the granite expression of an Easter Island statue, Rambo’s
still a man of few words - at least simplifying the scriptwriters’
work. It’s all-action blood and guts, exactly what Rambo
fans want. No doubt they’re aging with the years too. Perhaps
a younger audience into computer war games might also be impressed
with Rambo’s unique skill at despatching his enemies.
It’s near twenty years since John Rambo (Sylvester
Stallone) went into retirement. Now he’s catching cobras
in Thailand for some small change. Pity the snakes. Along come
a parcel of misguided missionaries who seek out Rambo to arrange
a surreptitious boat trip across the border into Burma. Fortunately
one is a pleasant blonde (Julie Benz) managing almost to get a
smile out of ‘stone face’ and his reluctant agreement
to take them into dangerous territory where the oppressed Karen
population are brutally treated. The Burmese soldiers behave badly
under their sadistic leader, a cross between Pol Pot and Hitler.
Scenes remind of the enemy bayoneting babies in those 1940's war
time propaganda movies. Christian Bale in his Rescue Dawn
misadventures with the Pathet Lao soldiers had a picnic compared
to these unlucky missionaries who are soon captured.
A ragtag bunch of tough mercenaries are paid to
go into Burma and rescue the missionaries. Rambo is required again
as boatman to take them up river. Soon he joins in the fray as
the mercenaries are hard-pressed by the Burmese troops, and Rambo
sorts things out using his winning ways with bow and arrow. In
fact, the mercenaries are really superfluous to requirements.
Rambo - that highly trained weapon of mass destruction - can write
off a battalion or two on his own.
The
scenes of carnage are well staged with CGI hyper-realism to the
point you quickly lose count of dozens being decapitated, shot
or blown to bits right in front of the cameraman. Stallone is
in his element here. The action never stops during the rescue
operation, and the blood flows freely. It’s actually a re-run
of previous Rambo adventures with a change of nationality for
the enemy; which should please those who like bloodthirsty war
sports, and especially Rambo fans. It may also have a social conscience,
although possibly by accident. One suspects it’s simply
a stratagem to portray violent excesses on the screen.
The cinematography of the jungle and river is better
than you might expect. Although the Burma Tourist Bureau may not
give a seal of approval to the storyline, the scenery looks pretty
good. Actually it was largely filmed in Thailand, with Thai extras
being demolished in quantity. The script drops a few pearls of
wisdom such as “Killing is as easy as breathing”;
“Live for nothing or die for something”. Stallone
directs his battle scenes effectively even if they are over the
top. You’ll seldom see such a horrific view of warfare.
It’s Stallone’s Apocalypse Now. But the performances
and dialogue are so perfunctory and secondary to the action, we’ll
not bother to go there.
At 61, Stallone’s looking a little tired and
older in closeups yet surprisingly he (or a stand-in) manages
his high powered action with as much energy as the earlier films.
It keeps the Rambo legend alive if that’s at all desirable.
Consider too that Harrison Ford has also revived Indiana Jones
and he’s no spring chicken.
Hopefully these aging actors won’t continue
making sequels until they’re doing their fight scenes in
walking frames.
John Bale
