“RAMBO” (2008)

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz, Matthew Marsden, Graham McTavish, Reynaldo Gallegos, Jake La Botz, Tim Kang, Maung Maung Khin & Paul Schulze
Written by: Art Monterastelli (screenplay), Sylvester Stallone (screenplay) & David Morrell (character)
Directed by Sylvester Stallone

Polly Staffle Rating: **

There’s a Bush in the White House, there’s a Clinton running for president, the New York Giants won the Super Bowl that Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers performed at and Sylvester Stallone is drawing blood on the big screen as John Rambo.

What the hell year is it again? Did I get caught in a time warp and “Quantum Leap” to the late eighties, early nineties or something like that? No. Okay, just checking. After watching the Stallone-directed “Rambo,” you could have easily convinced me that I did.

After 20 years of chasing after snakes and catching fish with a spear while hiding out in a rural Thailand village, Rambo is approached by a group of Christian human rights missionaries from Colorado. He has a boat and knows the river. They want to pay him to take them to a little Karen village that is often raped and pillaged in the war zone of Burma. They want to change the world with books and medicine. Rambo informs them unless they have guns, they ain’t changing nothing.

But virginal missionary sweetheart Sarah (played by Julie Benz, Rita on “Dexter”) somehow convinces Rambo and his “fuck the world” mentality to take them to the village anyway. He does so free of charge. Then he goes back to catching Cobras and sleeping in a hut, while the Karen village gets brutally attacked by the Burmese military. The village is burned to the ground and most of the villagers and missionaries are blown to bits, set on fire and sexually assaulted. A handful of people, mostly the missionaries, and the village women and boys are kidnapped. They are locked in cages, tortured, fed to pigs and raped.

A few weeks later, Rambo is told the missionaries have not been heard from and did not return from their book reading trip, and… like, can he help and stuff? We then get some brief flashbacks to the first three Rambo movies. Rambo decides that killing is what he does and it is essentially as easy as breathing, so he’s game for giving a group of mercenaries, who are being paid by the minister in charge of the mission, a ride to Berma for them to go free the white people. What’s the deal? Does Rambo have the only freaking boat in Thailand? It’s not even a nice boat.

Anyway, this sets the scene for Rambo to save the day with some guerrilla warfare and “MacGyver” tactics, as well as a chance to show off his trusty bow and arrow skills. Nope, no survival knife this go-round. Stallone probably saved that for part five. But what you do get is the bloodiest Rambo film yet. Though Stallone brought his “Rocky” franchise back down to Earth with the very humanistic “Rocky Balboa,” he doesn’t go that route here. With huge plotholes on display (which I will not get into), “Rambo” gives us Vietnam veteran John James Rambo bigger and badder than ever.

Here’s a play-by-play of the film’s final moments: Some stuff blows up. Lots of people get shot. Blood and mud splashes across the screen. Guts spill. Heads and arms fly off. Bullets blaze. More blood spills. The missionary sweetheart Sarah’s virginity stays intact. Yay! War is good. Yes, I’m being a bit facetious, but that is pretty much how the film wraps up and the theme is essentially, “War is necessary because evil exists. Violence is the only way to deal with anything. Killers kill, while healers heal, and that’s that.”

I think Stallone’s heart was in the right place with this film, but I just don’t feel he was able to pull it off. In a recent interview with Cinematical.com, Stallone said he felt he had certain responsibilities to live up to in making the film realistic because of the real violence in Burma. “Guys, this is happening today,” Stallone said, explaining what he told the MPAA to help the film get its R-rating. “And if we’re ever going to do something responsible, where art has the ability to influence peoples’ awareness and perhaps influence the lives of these people, don’t dilute it. Don’t water it down. It’s got to be uncomfortable, it is uncomfortable, it’s miserable. It’s distasteful, it’s horrifying. But if you’re not going to go there, don’t do the movie. Don’t do violence light. Don’t cut away too soon. I want people to feel it.”

So realism is what he was going for and I respect that, but at the same time I think he fails. “Rambo” doesn’t play like the Oliver Stone movies “Platoon” or “Born on the Fourth of July” where the violence punches you in the gut and you say, “Oh my God! I can’t believe crap like this has and is going on.” Stallone’s “Rambo” has the brutality, but it still just feels like an eighties over-the-top heroic popcorn feature like “The Delta Force” or “Missing in Action.” Wait, those were Chuck Norris movies. It was like those two films, but with Stallone instead of Norris, so essentially “Rambo: First Blood Part II” or “Rambo III.” So, yeah, like those oldie and cheesy, but goodies, “Rambo” is fun and despite Stallone’s efforts it feels a little demeaning towards, not only the people of Burma, but all of the places in the world where war is an every day reality.

It also comes off very arrogant and pro-war, as long as it is Americans fighting for American causes. “Live for nothing, or die for something,” Rambo says to the mercenaries when they start to have second thoughts on going up against the sadistic Burmese military. But the “something” he speaks of isn’t human lives, it’s “American lives” that the mercenaries are being paid to save. For Rambo, it is saving the virginal missionary sweetheart Sarah, and I’m not even sure why because he ain’t getting any. In fact, when the bloodshed is over, he doesn’t even get a hug or kiss from her.

But to get back on track, what really rubbed me the wrong way, is given the opportunity to save Karen villagers, such as a young boy that is about to be sexually molested by the Burmese major or women that are being humiliated, exploited and raped by a crowd of Burmese men, Rambo and the mercenaries pass these opportunities on by because “those people aren’t worth saving when we got white Americans, especially the virginal missionary sweetheart Sarah to save, not to mention our own asses.”

- CCF, February 2008