Rambo Review

Grade: C

The Sylvester Stallone farewell tour continues with the release of ‘Rambo’ the fourth installment of the ‘First Blood’ movies that debuted in the early 80s. John Rambo, one of Stallone’s cornerstone characters-- outside of the Rocky Balboa— the soft-spoken Vietnam veteran who has seen more than enough violence in his lifetime has retreated to Thailand working as a river guide on his boat.

A very melodramatic Rambo is soon offered a paying job to guide a mission group that is looking to help those caught in the middle of the war in Burma. Against his better judgment Rambo takes the group up to a nearby village in Burma, soon after the missionaries arrive, the rampaging government that kidnaps healthy young boys, forcing the children into military service, attacks the village. Once word reaches back to the States about what has happened the minister of the missionary’s church recruits Rambo to join other mercenaries to bring back the kidnapped evangelists and a daring rescue mission of seemingly insurmountable odds is begun.

In the final chapter of the John Rambo saga, the direction that Stallone takes the character and the franchise to new extremes. ‘Rambo’ also lets the audience almost believe that a small mercenary group armed with only a few semi-automatics, a single sniper rifle and Rambo with a self-fashioned machete can take out an entire national army. While the missionaries are quite possibly the most arrogant and stupid people alive.

The mission group leader, Michael (Paul Shulze) expositions that he’s been into Burma several times before and “nothing bad has happened before.” As his tag-team partner in the annoying corner we have Sarah (Julie Benz,) who is dedicated to hers and the team’s volunteer duty to helping the Burmese village and apparently just walk around and bask in her self-righteousness of just walking around the village looking pretty while the others are off “fulfilling their commitment” as is frequently said by them.

Unlike its predecessors ‘Rambo’ does not hold to a reality that you can be sucked into. We are re-introduced to a very somber, and remorseful Rambo, he still kills with ease and little hesitance, but much to his own disdain. The only thing that keeps this movie afloat is the gore, violence and intense (although obviously absurd) action sequences.

‘Rambo’ is the latest in a series of classic movies getting a last hurrah, like the upcoming ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ (May 22, 2008) to go along with previous releases of ‘Live Free or Die Hard,’ ‘Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines’ and the aforementioned ‘Rocky Balboa.’