I have to admit that during the eighties, my friends and I were part of the target market for Stallone action movies. Early twentysomethings, we were classic blue collar state Republicans who dutifully went to see each Rocky/Rambo outing after a session of weight lifting in the basement to the tune of "Eye of the Tiger."Nowadays, my weight set is a bit dusty, Republicans have had a rough few years, and "Eye of the Tiger" sounds more silly than inspirational. So, I wasn't expecting much from the fourth First Blood installment.
However, in the same way that Rocky Balboa was a distinct improvement over it's predecessor Rocky V, Rambo (apparently no roman numeral or subtitle) was not only better than the first two First Blood sequels, but a decent film in it's own right.
David Morrell's book, First Blood, which introduced the John Rambo character, contrasts a typical Korean War era grunt with a more highly specialized, and effective Vietnam serving soldier. Struggling to find himself since his return from Vietnam, Rambo runs afoul of the law in a small town. He turns out to be more than the local weekend warriors can handle and only Rambo's Green Beret mentor, Colonel Trautman, is able to get close enough to take him out.
According to an old Playboy interview, while negotiating the movie deal for his book, Morrell's attorney proudly informed him that he got the author a percentage of the First Blood sequels as well as a piece of the merchandising. A dispirited Morrell, who had used his last $500 to pay this lawyer, loudly complained that there was NOT going to be a sequel because Rambo dies at the end of the novel. Furthermore, who the hell would want a "Rambo" lunch box?
Of course, the rest is history and Morrell considers that the best five-hundred bucks he ever spent.
Rambo's cinematic incarnation survived to go back to Vietnam (we win this time) and then on to Afghanistan to fight Russians. Like Rocky, each successive Rambo battle sacrified credibility in favor of a more glossy, almost cartoonish, Hollywood approach .
In bringing Rambo's latest "mission" to the screen, director Stallone opts for a more "real", hard-edged depiction of the carnage.
Not unlike it's star, Rambo starts out like the African Queen on steroids.
While living in semi-seclusion in Bankok, John Rambo makes a living salvaging old PT boats and catching cobras used for snake acts held in primitive amphitheatres. This may be a deliberate metaphor for the current state of Stallone's show business career.
A group of Christian human rights missionaries seek him out ferry transport them by boat to Burma so that they can aid villagers facing oppression and degradation by the ruling army class.
Not seeing any point to their efforts (they're packing bibles not guns), Rambo refuses. But one of the missionaries, Sarah Miller (Julie Benz), is persistent and convinces him to change his mind.
The well meaning group quickly gets a taste of what they're up against when Rambo has to violently dispatch a group of river pirates they run across shortly after getting underway.
Dropping them off and returning to his hut, a troubled Rambo has nightmares which include flashbacks to previous missions.
Interestingly, one of Rambo's dark dreams shows Col. Trautman shooting him in the belly. Stallone cleverly incorporates a fleeting shot from the altered ending of the original First Blood where Rambo dies.
Rambo's trepidations are realized when he learns that the missionaries have been captured by a sadistic Burmese army platoon. We see in graphic detail the prisoners enduring sadistic tortures at the hand of their captors that includes rape, bamboo cages and being fed alive to pigs.
Rambo is enlisted to ferry a group of mercenaries, lead by the nasty SAS officer named Lewis (Graham McTavish), who have been hired to affect a rescue.
This time after dropping the mercenaries off, Rambo doesn't take Hicks' advice from Apocalypse Now and stay in the boat. Far from it. What follows is a brutal bloodbath that's more grounded in the jerky style of Saving Private Ryan than the glorified violence depicted in previous Rambo films. Stallone tries to make the action more credible by making Rambo part of a group, rather than pitting him against the world. My two main complaints was the fact that the mercenary force waits a bit too patiently for him to forge a new sword completely from scratch and a claymore explosion later in the film seems conveniently too destructive. Usually, I have more.
In his blog, The House Next Door, Matt Zoller Seitz postulates that Stallone's "stay the course" message in Rambo is really a thinly veiled show of support for continued U.S. involvement in Iraq.
He makes a fairly compelling argument.
I'd only offer that in the Rocky and Rambo films, Stallone often distills what's going on in his real life at the moment and incorporates that into the storyline. For years, Stallone toiled in vain to free himself from the label of artistic lightweight. With the exception of such projects as Copland, he's been largely unsuccessful.
Watching the film, I got the feeling that either consciously or unconsciously, Rambo's decision to go to Burma paralleled Stallone's decision to make yet another Rambo flick. It seems that both reluctantly come to the conclusion that sometimes you have to stick to what works, even if it's not pretty.
Just do it better.
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