In Thailand, John Rambo (Stallone) assembles a group of mercenaries and leads them up the Salween River to a Burmese village where a group of Christian Aid workers are being held hostage.
Rambo is not a very good movie, nor does it say anything very profound. It offers us extended gory scenes of brutal violence, but this is what Rambo does, and the movie does what it says on the tin. In this rather short, recent installment we see Rambo hunting snakes near the Burmese border, grunting at them as he drops them into cages like a Dr Dolittle with vocal problems. Before long he is dragged into the fighting when a group of missionaries ask Rambo to take them on his boat up the Salween River to Burma. They are on a humanitarian mission, and show obvious disgust when Rambo asks if they have weapons, "When will you learn?" he murmurs. He only agrees to take them when Sarah Miller, the most down to earth of the missionaries, starts to talk earnestly about war and poverty, while still managing to flick and shake her Herbal-Essences washed hair in a way no snake-catching boat-driving killer could refuse. From this point onwards it's blood and guts all the way, especially when a group of British mercenaries get involved. The violence is so bloody it becomes almost dull, and the the part where Rambo tears open a man's throat with his bare fingers leaves you feeling sickened rather than thrilled. Apart from this unsurprising issue with violence, the film is generally slick and watchable. Just don't expect anything memorable.
John Rambo returns to grace our screens again, this time in Burma, and just as dangerous as he was 20 years ago. It seems that he had been hanging around in South East Asia since the Vietnam War ended, collecting snakes in Northern Thailand for tourist shows and living with the locals. Then his peace is disturbed by a group of American medical missionaries wishing to go up stream to help the Karen, brutally persecuted, as I write this, by the military junta that rules Burma. Rambo tells them not to go, that they will not change anything, that their pacifism means nothing in Burma - that they are not in their cosy suburban neighbourhoods anymore. Nevertheless, he gives in and, courtesy of an attractive blonde, agrees to take them up river. At this point I was cringing: Could this film really justify US cultural as well as military intervention in Asia? Apparently not. Rambo is proved correct before the missionaries even reach their destination when they are attacked by some river pirates. Rather than seeing his Christian fares raped and beheaded, John shoots the pirates, to the disgust of the missionaries. They get to their destination, but are then kidnapped in a brutal raid on the village they are staying in. Predictably, Rambo returns to right that wrong, despite his world-weariness, and with a group of mercenaries - the devil is brought in to do god"s work. This is all as corny you might imagine and the dialogue truly, truly terrible. Perhaps its message - underlined twice at the end of the film, a missionary learns the way of violence, and acknowledging it - is dubious. But I don"t think it shows that violence is all that it takes to fix a problem. War and genocide do not end when Rambo has finished gunning, often in half, a few hundred Burmese soldiers. And the film is haunted, like Rambo, incidentally, by the ghosts of Vietnam and the war films set their. The film opens with real images of war in Burma and does show the Karen freedom fighters doing their stuff. The action is brutal, not glamorous. And I think that the film is a lot more interesting than others might have you believe. Adding to that the fact that Stallone"s heart is, I think, in the right place - he wants to draw our attentions to what is happening in Burma - the film is worth watching. And if you liked the earlier instalments of the franchise I am sure you will get a kick out of the carnage in this one, John Rambo"s swansong.
Burma is a beautiful country. Enslaved by 'The British Empire' for over a hundred years and used as a base for imperial drug cartels / colonial prison camps, her people fought tirelessly for their freedom; an independence bravely won in the late 1940s, sadly, interethnic strife soon transformed this land of plenty into a perennial battleground, site of one of the longest civil wars in history. Its good to know Sly Stallone cares about narrative continuity if nothing else, after all; he's back in Thailand which, as fans will recall, was where Col. Trautman (the late/great Richard Crenna) recruited him for their last hurrah (way back in 1988): Running those Godless Russians out of Afghanistan, no less. Setting up the old one, two after a box office TKO with 'Rocky Balboa' Stallone revives world weary killing machine John Rambo for a forth, and hopefully final, outing in his unimaginatively titled, yet unremittingly violent, 80s style actioner: 'Rambo'. Pushing his newfound faith with all the subtly of an anti-aircraft gun (and you wouldn't want to be on the business end of one of those, as a few Junta soldiers fond out in this movie) Stallone is recruited by vivacious Christian missionary and former 'Angel' actress Julie Benz, to ferry her fellow band of asinine God botherers from Thailand onto the dark, pagan shores of Burma: very good, very Rudyard Kipling. But that's where the similarities begin and end, for it seems that the Junta, when they aren't massacring Karen natives in a protracted campaign of ethic genocide, have some rather unpleasant penchants for drug dealing, mutilation, kidnap, rape and torture, thus when the missionaries are taken hostage, guess who their benefactors and Brit actor Mathew Marsden call upon to save them? John Rambo, who just stops short of saying 'I told you so', is soon persuaded to extract the hapless, annoyingly earnest, captives from heathen hands: maybe it was a believer's religious obligation, maybe it was a soldier's sense of duty or maybe it was just the hypnotising glare of rain reflecting off Julie Benz's ample chest, that inspires our man to go once more into the breach, on a bloody search n' rescue deep into Junta held territory. Now Stallone's portrayal of Burmese Asians is, shall we say, less than flattering: Not since Alan Parker's risible 'Midnight Express' (1978) have such racist caricatures been put up on screen, and I suppose it's a credit to their Communist reserve and stiff upper sickle, that Burma's hardcore hatchet men didn't come a looking for 'The Italian Stallion' at his world famous eatery! 'Rambo' depicts the Junta as some kind of archaic monster lurking in the shadows of a misty land that time forgot, when in reality, it's a fully integrated military regime that sits with other monsters in the corporate board rooms of North America and Europe: with Condeleeza Rice's company 'Chevron' with France's corporation 'Total' in consortium with Dick Cheney's 'Halliburton' with British 'Rolls Royce', 'Aquatic' and 'Orient Express'. In fact, I would've loved to have seen Sly acknowledge that 'Halliburton', 'Chevron', The Junta and 'Total' built a lucrative gas pipeline in Burma's offshore oil fields by using slave labour, or mention, in passing, that the worst, most feared and brutal elements of Burma's secret police are exclusively trained and armed in Israel, Australia and Italy. But no;;best dumb it down for the masses, after all, its a lot easier to pander to lowbrow delusion & oriental stereotypes, than it is to tell an honest story. In the battle of the old timers, Stallone is 2-1 up on his 'Planet Hollywood' partners, and though I liked 'Live Free Or Die Had' (mainly because of Maggie Q, who's fit in spite of being saddled with a name better suited to a cartoon cow standing in alphabetical order on an unregulated dairy farm). Now according to our former Green Beret: "Killing is as easy as breathing"...but its not though, is it? I mean breathing is breathing; killing, I imagine, requires a little more effort, a bit of thinking perhaps, maybe even the odd weapon coupled with a fair bit of aggression harnessed into an explosive, finely sculpted sphere of inner turmoil, premeditation and bloodcurdling fury, which, on reflection, is nothing like breathing...at all. Insane, gritty, well choreographed ultra-violence can't quite compensate for a ropey script and shocking bouts of overacting, for if one were to revisit 'First Blood' (1982) or even 'Rambo III' (1988), you"ll quickly come to realise how nonsensical 'Rambo' (2008) is in terms of story and character. 'First Blood' was a low key masterpiece; an introspective, realistically harsh and often melancholy treatise on what it feels like to have fought in the wrong war, and how hard it is to readjust into the very system that betrayed you. 'Rambo III', though outrageous in places, mocks the folly of imperialism, 'Rambo II' (still the silliest of the series) was a case of sour grapes for losing in Vietnam, whilst 'Rambo' attempts to say something about justifiable intervention in an age of career minded bureaucracy: worth watching once for the action, but not a patch on the original. Give it up granddad.
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Sylvester Stallone pulls on the camo one more time as Vietnam vet John Rambo takes on the Burmese military. Since helping the mujahedeen rid Afghanistan of the Russians, John Rambo (Stallone) has been living a quiet life in northern Thailand, trapping poisonous snakes to sell to local entertainers. But when a group of human rights missionaries pleads with him to ferry them upstream to Burma to re-supply the oppressed Karen tribe, Rambo reluctantly agrees. A few weeks later however, word filters through that the missionaries have been taken hostage by the Burmese military, who are using them as pawns in their local war. Knowing the hostages have no other hope of rescue, Rambo sets out into the heart of the jungle on a one-man mission to hell and back.
Please note this is a region 2 DVD and will require a region 2 (Europe) or region Free DVD Player in order to play. The ultimate American action hero returns - with a vengeance! After spending several years in Northern Thailand operating a longboat on the Salween River, John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) reluctantly agrees to carry a group of Christian missionaries into war torn Burma. But when the aid workers are captured by ruthless Nationalist Army soldiers, Rambo leads a group of battle-scarred, combat-hardened mercenaries on an epic last ditch mission to rescue the prisoners - at all costs. Actors Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz, Matthew Marsden, Graham McTavish, Reynaldo Gallegos, Jake La Botz, Tim Kang, Maung Maung Khim, Paul Schulze, Ken Howard & Sai Mawng Director Sylvester Stallone Certificate 18 years and over Year 2008 Screen Widescreen Languages English - Dolby Digital (5.1) Subtitles English ; Hindi Duration 1 hour and 28 minutes (approx)
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