We Are the Sprocket Holes vol. 14

RAMBO: 9/10

there is graphic news reel footage of dead, dying, and mutilated people, some children. we cut to Burmese militants throwing land mines into a swamp. they load their captives out of a big jeep, hold guns to their heads, and force them to run across the water. One of the captives catches the land mine and erupts in a thick cloud of crimson viscera. the captives who make it to the other side of the swamp are than mowed down by machine guns, their bodies nearly shredded at the wounds.

that's the first 3 minutes of Sylvester Stallone's masterful RAMBO. RAMBO meets somewhere between Reaganomics Action Film and the Grand Guignol, forgoing much of the revisionist politics of previous installments ("We could've won Vietnam but you wouldn't let us!!"), instead going for the ripped-out throat, close up and in full view. It is more Grindhouse than Grindhouse.

The plot is simple; missionaries are taken hostage by the evil Burmese army. The US Embassy won't help them, so Rambo and a batch of mercenaries are sent in to retrieve them. now when i say "evil" i mean it. The Burmese of RAMBO are as cruel and sadistic a batch of villains you'll find this side of Hostel. they rape women, murder children, kill dogs, burn down entire villages with huge flame throwers, and much of it is shown in full detail. We even revisit the killing fields, seeing bloated, fly covered bodies strewn about the grounds, as if a wartime mortuary had thrown up.

Now what about the titular character? Well Rambo himself is a brick shithouse, with gattling guns mounted at each corner. His is a grizzled world weary loner. He doesn't speak much, so you won't find any big "nuthins is ovah!" speech here. Stallone seems to have allowed Rambo to let go of those things and just be more or less a force of nature, someone who murders because it's in his blood. It's what he does...it's what he's done for more than half his life. Make no mistake, Rambo is little more than a mass murderer, but he's chosen what some might say is "the right target".

I did find myself asking one question at the film's end; "How Does this man Sleep At Night?". A psychological evaluation of this character/film/audience is useless, though. This is not high art. This is not reality. Check your liberal guilt at the door and get lost in the piles of severed limbs, the avalanche of guts, and the showers of grenade instigated blood rains. The only way this film could have been more rad was if Rambo had to fight a giant shark in the third act, or an army of black bears who mind link with giant brown recluse spiders. But i'll settle for a few hundred bullet-related decapitations and some disemboweling.

Every reason to hate RAMBO is every reason to love RAMBO. this is not an exercise in sensitivity. This is not going to fill you with hope for mankind. Much like the heart-in-the-right-place-ite missionaries of the film, any idealist who witnesses this film will be left confused, shell shocked, and perhaps defeated. Not the most positive message i know, but this is no message picture. This is Nihilism with a bullet, followed by several thousand more bullets, a nuclear bomb, and more than a few arrows to the back of the head.

Nothing really is over.