On Film: Rambo

Directed By Sylvester Stallone

Starring Sylvester Stallone

 

Sylvester Stallone is a big missed opportunity.  Sure he was always the big macho action hero, but when he pulled back his cockiness and did the work of acting, and sometimes writing, he has done some really great things.  He only gets in that mode occasionally though, the two best examples are the original Rocky and Copland.  At its heart the original First Blood is an action movie, but the character had some death and the movie had something to say about the era in which it was made about the Vietnam war and how the soldiers were treated when they came home. 

 

Many people forget that Stallone actually wrote the original Rocky movie.  It seems to me that if he puts some thought into it, and like I said dials back the machismo, he can do something great.  A couple of years ago he decide to cap the Rocky series off by writing a final installment.  Many critics felt like the idea was ridiculous since he was in his late 50's but Stallone pulled it off by writing a more humble character, an aged character looking for a last chance to redeem himself not just with his career but with his estranged son.  Rocky Balboa ended up being second only to the original film in the Rocky franchise. 

 

When I heard Stallone was returning to the Rambo franchise for one final film I was skeptical but I had high hopes due to the great job he did with Rocky but, well, he is 61.

 

The Movie

 

Stallone wrote this film and as a return to the original film this film has something to say about the atrocities happening in an ongoing civil war in neighboring Burma.  The film starts with actual footage from that war as is common with this kind of footage it's pretty disturbing stuff.  Refreshingly this footage, and the film, doesn't try to blame the United States in some way for the war or even attack the United States for not being involved.  Instead the film just shows that the war is horrible and something should be done to stop the atrocities.  There's another message that I did find interesting and it's in regards to Missionary work in these types of countries.  I'll get to that in a minute.

 

 

Rambo has made a life for himself in Thailand catching snakes for money and well, not doing much else.  Rambo felt betrayed by the country he loved and after everything that happened to him over the years.  He's desensitized he's virtually lost his humanity.  One day a group of missionaries tracks Rambo down because they feel he is the only local who has a boat that could ferry them into Burma.  Rambo refuses to help them and tries to impart upon them how dangerous the area is in as few words as possible.  In one of my favorite scenes Rambo asks the missionaries if they are taking any weapons to Burma.  When they reply that they are not he tells them they aren't going to make a difference.  Rambo is a warrior and he had the need to win a fight drilled into him during his training and his experience in Vietnam so in his mind the only way to make a difference in Burma is to fight and win.  This may or may not be true, but it says a lot about why Rambo had to leave the United States because he needed that simple good guy/bad guy situation where if he had to he could simply fight and win, something he wasn't allowed to do in Vietnam.

 

 

Eventually Rambo does agree to take the missionaries into Burma.  He drops them off and of course they get into trouble.  This time around Rambo has to work with a younger group of mercenaries to go in and save the missionaries.  He hasn't worked in a group like this since Vietnam and these guys don't have a clue who Rambo really is.

 

This movie is flawed, much more so than Rocky Balboa was, but for everything the movie might do slightly wrong it really does amazingly right.  Now, depending on how old you are you may or may not know who the Canon Group was.  This company made all the over the top action films of the late 70's to the mid 80's.  Some examples are the Missing in Action films, the first couple of Delta Force films, some ninja films including the pinnacle of that subgenre Revenge of the Ninja.  These were exciting films that were short on story but big on action, and most were also extremely patriotic.  While Rambo isn't excessively patriotic the movies have always fit that Canon Group bill in every other way.

 

 

So what if you took a hero created in this era in this mold and showed him at 60 years old.  He'd be slower and more strategic in his decision making but just as much of a badass, and that describes the Rambo we get in this film.  I love this film in the same way that I loved Live Free or Die Hard.  It feels very retro, even more so than the Bruce Willis film.  LFoDH couldn't resist getting CGI happy in the last act even creating a CGI McLane.  Rambo stays true to the 80's action movie formula and atmosphere with visceral fighting and gritty action with big guns and lots of bullets.  The way Rambo does the badass killing is fantastic too because he does it in a way that's an adrenaline rush but it feels like the character made the decision strategically based on the limitation of his age.  Finally without giving away too much the closing scene of the film is perfect, taking the franchise full circle and creating a proper retirement to the character.  If you've been even a passing fan of the franchise the closing scene is maybe even just a little moving.

 

As I mentioned earlier, this film isn't deep on plot and the characters are a bit stereotypical but none of that seems to matter.  The message is a good one and not installed into the film in an insulting way and the pace of the film is brisk and exciting.  Stallone is still in amazing shape and he really pulls off the character this one last time.


8/10

 

-Stephen Lackey