RAMBO: Movie Review

Sometimes you just have to go against your better judgement and see a movie that will probably suck. This was just the circumstance.

The movie begins with scenes of the bloody and horrific oppression rained down upon the Burmese people by the Burmese government. Not sure if that information is true, but an oppressed population with the military in power makes for the basis of a good shoot em up. The following scene is by a river with John Rambo and a few of his presumably Thai snake charming buddies. They carefully search for snakes for the tourist trap they work for in the middle of the jungle. Very odd that there is a random snake charming tourist destination in the thai jungle but I guess stranger things have happened. Along comes a group of Christians sharing the Gospel and supplies to the Karen rebels in Burma.

Through some terrible dialog and poor character development, John is convinced by the lone female character to take the group upstream from Thailand into Burma by river. Somehow he is considered the expert in this field and word has spread back to America of his boating and stealthiness. Long story short the Christian group helps out a small tribe until the military just so happens to overtake this small community, kill 95% of them, and take four of the original seven or so Americans hostage.

Along comes the pastor of the sponsoring church in his sport coat to John's place of work in the FREAKING JUNGLE, and coaxes him to help a group of mercenaries to save the Americans. His guilt gets the best of him and he agrees. The mercenaries are a rag tag group led by a SAS jerkwad who talks a lot and "has seen that 1,000 mile stare before" (which John continuously gives the SAS fella without saying much at all on the boat ride).

The infiltration into the Burmese military's camp is pretty cool and the sniper with the 50 mm gun is a bad ass. Come to find out the leader of the military group is gay and likes little boys which is unfortunate. I think that is probably an unfortunate truth in many of the countries under civil war where young boys are captured and forced into military duty. All of the captives are freed with just a few soldiers gutted, blow away by the sniper rifle, and throat ripped out by John Rambo himself. Oh...I forgot to add that the soldiers all were watching hostage native women dance and then raped them all when they got drunk.

When all of the soldiers wake up in the morning they realize they have been snookered and head into the woods with dogs and guns. A great chase scene entails with Rambo's only weapon as a claymore. Works out well nonetheless...as you obviously though it would. No hero gets one bullet and makes it go to waste. Rambo is so cool he doesn't even get a bullet. He gets a freaking proximity mine. At last when you think the good guys are done for on the river by the getaway boat, John comes to the rescue and shoots the hell out of the bad guys.

The writing sucked, the acting was weak, and the action was better than average. I say wait for the dollar theatre or dinner theatre and TEAR IT UP! Save a buck or get drunk to make it count! All in all a typical shoot em up. They could have tried a little harder with the story, but I guess by now most POW/MIA/American's taken hostage for no good reason stories are already written.

I forgot to add, Sly Stallone needs to back off of the weights and 'roids. He is like Barry Bonds. He gets more ripped as he gets older. I don't think Rocky or the original Rambo series ever had him this ripped.