"Nothing is over!"
... ain't it the truth.
Rambo was originally someone's idea to cash in on 9-11 by sending has-been action icon John Rambo into Afghanistan to hunt down Osama Bin Laden and his drinking buddy Al Queda (the new 'Al' joke, replacing the old favorite “Al Kaholic”), but the longer it took to put together, the less people were interested in doing it. Besides, I think the PlayStation2 game Fugitive Hunter kinda ruined everybody's dreams of what it'd be like to watch OBL go DOA. Anyway, realizing there are military travesties being done in the world that Bush hasn't dipped his dick in at the behest of dirty Uncle Cheney, the creative minds behind Rambo went a different route: fighting the uniformed horror show in Burma. I think it was that or Darfur, and Burma won the coin toss. As such, the flick opens with plenty of eye-gougingly nightmarish footage of the kind of shit Faces of Death always promised, but tried to pass off reenactments of instead. Nasty shit. Hopefully some of the people who did see this flick reconsidered their weekly snubbing of twenty-somethings in colorful t-shirts on the sidewalks asking them to take 5 minutes out of their lunch breaks to to sign petitions to help prevent more such victims of global terrorism. Then again, they probably checked their morality coats at the door of the theater once they got rapped up in the more favorable hero inflicted carnage later on anyway...
All I know is that I welcome the somber chords of Rambo's theme music after all these years. Still stirs something in the void of my chest cavity.
J.R. (no, not him, the other J.R.) has settled his old, puffy self down in Thailand. Away from the rigors of modern politics and global conflict, Old Man Rambo wiles away his days shooting fish with arrows and catching cobras for use in what are either rites of passage for Thai kids, local death sports, or the impoverished Asian version of “Jackass”. Some shithead missionaries from Colorado who think they can save the world (and are invincible because they're doing "God's work") approach 'Bo to do the tour guide thing and escort them up the river so they can bring aid to their brothers and sisters in, you guessed it, Burma. Not willing to put his 90 year old neck skin on the line for a God Warrior goodwill mission, Rammy tells them in no uncertain terms to stick their care packages up their poop chutes and get on the next plane back to Aspen. So confident that they know what they're doing (though, as we all know, nobody who thinks they know what they're doing ever knows what the fuck it is they're actually doing) Sarah, one of "the Lord's flock", is persistent in appealing to Johnny-Cake's genetic disposition to right wrongs. Of course, the geezer actually folds with relative ease, carting the crew up shit creek with only paddles made of good intentions to navigate. Hopefully Grandpa Rambo took a tidy sum for his services... though he probably didn't... stupid, sentimental, killing machine that he is...
After giving the fishies some fresh bad guy brain matter and bone fragments to nibble on (with a slight after taste of gun powder), the gravely ex-Green Beret delivers the group like the world's deadliest UPS guy (I'd hate to imagine him in the little brown shorts *shudder*), then heads back to his life of serpent wrangling and sharpening the blades of his outboard motor. I was really hoping this was a precursor to some sort of outboard motor related violence for later on, but sadly it only turned out to be a showcase for John's metal working abilities. If I used emoticons in my reviews, this is where the colon and left parenthesis sign would be.
As for the rest of the movie, if you think a lot of Burmese men are slaughtered, Burmese women are raped, and Burmese children and brutalized, you'd be right. If you think that the missionaries are generally killed or taken hostage, you'd also be right. Finally, if you thought that old Johnny Rammstein overcomes his flashbacks of his past cinematic adventures, cobbles himself a new machete (there's that metal working thing again), shows us that “once a crazy Nam vet drifter who can kill men with his bare hands, always a crazy Nam vet drifter who can kill men with his bare hands” and heads in to save the day by turning a shitload of evil Burmese soldier guys into cheap dog food (while wiping out a sizable stretch of Burmese jungle as well), you'd be right yet again... and frighteningly accurate in your assumption. Did you read the script or something? I guess all those things your 6th grade Math teacher wrote about you in your permanent record weren't so accurate after all. Good for you.
On the plus side, Rambo goes into the shit alongside a squad of mercs, so he's not billed as a one man Armageddon. Then again, the movie's called Rambo not Mercenary Jerk-Off Strike Force, so we've all got a good grasp on what's going to happen to them anyway. As with any of John's exploits, what starts off as a basic "snatch and grab" rescue operation degenerates into an all out rain of the red stuff and a monsoon of hot lead. Heads explode, people are cut in half, internal organs ain't so internal anymore, and guys in uniform die by the dozens minute after minute. I almost want to say there are more carcasses on display here than the first three Rambo flicks combined. It's not to say that there's nothing but bloodshed going on here. There's actually some tension built up when everybody's sneaking around trying not to get shot, followed by a dramatic chase through the jungle. But, in the end you knew it was all going to come down to 15 or 20 minutes of pure splatter. Sure, it's 99% generated off of some guy's laptop, but it's splatter none the less.
Moral of the Story: Doing missionary work only leads to getting your legs chewed off by pigs.
Sequel to: First Blood ; Rambo: First Blood Part 2 ; Rambo 3
