IV">Rambo IV

This post was pub­lished over 700 days ago and there­fore may not rep­res­ent cur­rent Out­side Con­text think­ing or opin­ion. Please, do not let that detract from your enjoy­ment of it!

“What do you mean “one” of the most viol­ent movies of all time? It “is” the most viol­ent movie of all time!” –Sylvester Stallone

Sylvester Stal­lone has cre­ated some of the best loved char­ac­ters ever to grace the cinema screen. Char­ac­ters we all know and love to bits. Every­one loved Rocky, why? Because he had heart. Every­one loved Rambo, why? Because he kicks anyone’s ass for Amer­ica! The old idea of Amer­ica.

“Rambo? Rambo makes James Bond look like Mickey Mouse!” — Basho’s step­dad 1985.

I grew up with Rambo and Rambo II and have seen them all many times. My par­ents never minded me watch­ing the viol­ence because Rambo only kills ‘bad­dies’. Well, he’s back and he has one more set of ‘bad­dies’ to kill. After the excel­lent remake of this other clas­sic Rocky, Stal­lone knows what his audi­ence is going to want. Firstly Rambo must look like he’s 20 foot tall. Here he still does, the thick size of his neck hav­ing not atrophied at all in the inter­ven­ing years.

Secondly, Rambo must be on his own. Sure Rambo here has help from some mer­cen­ar­ies and their ex-SAS leader (who has the same Lon­doner accent as me btw) but he must kill all the char­ac­ter bad­dies one on one.

Thirdly, Rambo must be tor­tured by his viol­ent past. It doesn’t mat­ter that he isn’t a Chris­tian, but it does mat­ter that he is try­ing to repent for what he was and indeed still is.

“Y’know what you are, what you’re made of. War is in your blood. When you’re pushed, killing’s as easy as breathing”

Finally, Rambo must carve up an army using an array of heavy caliber weapons.

Check!

All of these things are brought together with a very large dose of nos­tal­gia; the font used in the open­ing cred­its, the mud, the theme song, the big fuck­ing knife and even his mega bow and arrow set make a come back. Also mak­ing a come back and the main focus of the film is the over the top action and people being ser­i­ously owned by Rambo. Without a doubt this is the most bloody film I have ever seen. More bloody than Ham­burger Hill, more bloody than any other Rambo, more bloody even than A Bet­ter Tomor­row II (where Chow Yun Fat shoots 86 people in a 100 minute film).

This film has a very ser­i­ous gore level to say the least. You have been warned.

So what about the story? For­get it. There isn’t one and there isn’t any deep philo­soph­ising bey­ond try­ing to work out what Rambo is think­ing under that intract­able gaze of his. The entire IMDB entry says:

In Thai­l­and, John Rambo joins a group of mer­cen­ar­ies to ven­ture into war-torn Burma, and res­cue a group of Chris­tian aid work­ers who were kid­napped by the ruth­less local infantry unit. IMDB

This is not a remake of Rambo I, this is a remake of Rambo II. So recom­mend­ing it depends on that dis­tinc­tion. If you loved Rambo I’s soul, its per­form­ances by Richard Crenna, David Caruso and espe­cially Brian Den­nehy and found the action was a back­drop to that, then this is not the Rambo for you. How­ever, if your memor­ies of Rambo are of him shoot­ing that bow, blow­ing shit up and kick­ing Steven Berkoff in the nadgers then this is your Rambo all right. With a cherry on top. After this I won­der what will be next. Cobra could be remade as new. Rumours also exist of a Rambo V, which would be strange to say the least. I per­son­ally am lov­ing these recent 80’s nos­tal­gia movies, like Rocky and now Rambo, they remind me of watch­ing Rambo as a kid on Sundays eat­ing my Sunday din­ner and yelling encour­age­ment as he dished out pun­ish­ment. They played to your sense of right and wrong and never asked you to ques­tion that. Its kind of lib­er­at­ing to see movies like that again. I kind of felt a little like Anton Ego in Rata­touille, when he takes the first bite of the dish the rat has pre­pared for him. It flashes him back to his child­hood, as did this film for me, and that is always a good thing to cherish.

So, I per­son­ally loved it, I feel that the look was amaz­ing and crisp as hell. I don’t mind gore, nor do I mind a short story:

I give it an 8 out of 10.

“Mis­sion… accomplished.”

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