
I was fortunate enough to attend the 7+ hour Rambo Marathon at the Scotiabank theatre in lovely downtown Vancouver yesterday evening, where I revisited the entire saga. It's curious the way the series started, with the sad, and dare I say gentle, First Blood. With its meagre kill count of 1, First Blood was a psychological study in thriller trappings. Sure there are some explosions and gun-fights, but ultimately it is a study in one tormented man's personal demons and inability to fit into human society. It's almost comical how Rambo: First Blood Part II takes him to Vietnam and has him wipeout an entire generation of Viet-Cong. It seemingly goes against everything the first film was saying, and embraces the type of gloss that the age of excess demanded. Rambo III is so far over the top that it becomes a droll study in overkill. A fun one, to be sure, but so far removed from its humble beginnings that it's bizarre. After re-reviewing them, however, it is important to note that they are all consistently enjoyable films with nicely understated work by Stallone, and brilliant technical efficiency. So, how

Well, Rambo is, without any doubt, the goriest and most stomach-churning of them all. It also, on the flip side, restores the sadness so well exemplified in the series' first entry. John Rambo is a man constantly in pain whose only ability is to stop evil through sheer, relentless savagery. He's the anti-John McClane. No sneaking around air-shafts for this guy.
Rambo opens with news reel footage of the human rights atrocities in Burma, where the Karen Christians have been systematically slaughtered over the last sixty year (The longest civil war in history!). This real-life touch is both staggering and problematic. The previous Rambo sequels, while they did make use of current political situations, were always in some sort of heightened reality. This opening grounds the film in the real. We then witness the horrific massacre of a tribe of villagers by the Burmese military, and it is stunning. Director Stallone lingers over the violence, making us witness the unspeakable. It is, frankly, shocking.
The basic plot then kicks in. Rambo has been living in Thailand as a snake-wrangler for the last twenty or

What I really liked about Rambo was the simplicity of it. It's much like last year's Rocky Balboa, in that it is a lean 90-minute piece with a minimum of plot that relies on the mythic essence of the title character. The plot is a clothes-line and while in many other films that is a major problem,

As for the action, it is numbing. The human atrocities presented here make the gruesome material of Schindler's List look like gentle ribbing. The villain's are so far past monster status that it is almost uncomfortable. In a sense, by immersing the viewer in their deeds we begin to better understand the psyche of John Rambo. He has witnessed horrors so severe that he ha

Many will hate Rambo for being such a blatantly sadistic (and obvious) exercise in brutality. But, it is exactly what it has been marketed and intended to be. That it does it so well is n

4 out of 5
P.S.: While it is odd to have Rambo follow Rambo III, the title fits
the film. It's simple and hard-hitting. Again, much like Rambo himself.
P.P.S.: Richard Crenna's presence is missed, but doesn't detract from the film. Something tells me that even Trautman would have been throwing up his hands halfway through events of this film.