Tagline: Heroes never die... They just reload.
Curiosity: Not gonna lie. The trailer was pretty sweet.
Plot: A whopping 20 years after he helped terrorists beat the mother-hating snot out of communists, Rambo finds the title character (Sylvester Stallone) working as a snake wrangler/bitter old man in southeastern
Thoughts: Jesus Christ (he of Son of God fame) used parables—simple stories—to convey complex concepts like the
As a drama, this movie bites, unsurprisingly. But as an action flick, the 93-minute Rambo delivers. The plot regarding the Bible thumpers moves fairly quickly, allowing for Stallone to focus on killing people with guns, knives, landmines, arrows, and his own hands (for dramatic effect!) once those darn thumpers get captured by a Burmese army.
The violence is never cartoonish, like in The 300, nor are the scenes ever winkingly bad-funny, like in The Marine. Stallone keeps it gritty and realistic, minus one terrible CGI explosion and a few tricks with guns that don’t actually work in the real world. While you won’t see organs flying every which way, Stallone still achieves a level of destruction to the human form unmatched by any other picture, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
When Stallone kills a soldier with over 100 bullets, it’s awesome. When he rips out someone’s throat with his hands, it’s awesome. When he shoots an arrow through a guy’s leg and then another through his head, knocking him on to a land mine which sends dude-chunks flying every which way, you best believe it is one of the most awesomely over-the-top actions against a bad guy since Bad Boys II.
But while these violent scenes can be funny, the camera often lingers just a couple seconds longer than viewers will want it to shoot, like during the trinity of child deaths a third of the way in. Watching the overwrought yet sparse dialogue between Stallone and Benz is hilarious; watching a kid take a bayonet to the stomach, not so much.
Audience members who can get passed the kiddie killing (oh, and a couple of thoroughly uncomfortable gang rape scenes), though, will enjoy some great action sequences. While Rambo is practically a silent film in terms of dialogue, it showcases some great beatdowns. It might seem like “action porn” to some, but the film’s brilliant final battle scene, filled with hundreds of exploding and/or flaming extras who miraculously multiply for no reason, dazzles with a bevy of explosions and shots of Benz crying.
What’s weird about the whole affair, though, is its central thesis: that you can kill to save a life and establish peace. Rambo believes this so ferociously that it racks up a 236-person body count in order to save two people (That’s an average of 2.54 kills per minute). In the world of dumb action movies, Rambo stands above most. Where most people who hear the saying “Killing for peace is like fucking for virginity,” will say, “Oh, you’re right, that does seem like a gap in logic, huh?”, Rambo merely says, “Darn tootin’.” The film zips by fast enough for this conclusion to never be challenged. Bask in the warm energy of such terrible lines as “When you’re pushed, killing’s as easy as breathing.”
Reflection: Unsurprisingly, this movie is banned in
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