(see Conservative Belle…a review…sorta)
                                                    
I’m soooooo tired but I might as well just throw in a couple words about the latest RAMBO movie.
We went at midnight last night, pouring rain to the Arclight Cinerama dome in Hollywood.
The theater was eh…probably a little over half full, a couple people sporting red bandanas, fatigues, you know the usual crowd. But midnight movies are rowdy so when the lights went down the cheers went up.
So now to the question – did I like it?
Yeah I did.
It’s a logical start and finish to the Rambo character. He is a killing machine, and when you’ve seen, been through, all that he has, it’s only a shell of a guy that remains, stripped of humanity and really kind of hollow.
Maybe that’s why he takes the “missionaries†up stream? There is this sense that Rambo is taking a journey to reconnect with humanity in some way during the film.
I have to give kudos to Stallone for shining the spotlight on the horrors going on in Burma. When you see this film you’ll realize that genocide is not relegated to Africa, not in the least.
It also makes the point that pacifism (something that Spacekicker REALLY doesn’t get) lacks justice. The missionaries in the film are very anti killing, but when you see the atrocities that are occurring you wonder about the futility of it. Sometimes (and I think this as a Christian) it’s important to “take up arms against a sea of trouble and by opposing end themâ€.
It also reminds me of how blessed we are to be living WHERE we are.
The first half hour of the movie is an unflinching look at the horrors of what is happening to the Christian population of Burma, the Karen. When I say unflinching I MEAN unflinching. You will see dismemberment, kids being killed, mass terror on the scale of…well…no movie I can think of.
You remember that first ten minutes of Saving Private Ryan? Yeah…ummm…that’s a drop of rain in the oversized violent bucket of RAMBO.
So you are primed to hate the bad guys, and I DO mean HATE. So at the point that Rambo gets involved you really want him to wreak mass destruction on the heads of these evil S.O.B.’s.
Plus Rambo is backed up with some pretty gnarly mercenaries. The sniper “school boy†is my favorite…seriously…I need a .50 caliber rifle.
Now I warn you. This might be the most VIOLENT movie I have ever seen, and if you know me, you know how many violent movies I have seen, so when I say that I do not say it lightly.
When the action kicks in, the movie does not stop. The reign of pain that is visited on the bad guys, on the mercs on everyone is unparalleled. This is not the glossy Rambo of the eighties, this is the killing machine that was alluded to in First Blood part 1.
Some of the things I didn’t like.
There is some stilted acting and a couple of scenes where the blocking for dialogue is a little awkward.
Also, Stallone occasionally gets a little self indulgent when it comes to editing. He sometimes OVER emphasizes a point by cutting back and forth, back and forth between his stone like face and the face of Julie Benz’s character. But it’s only moments and for the most part they are diminished in the gut wrenching terror machine that is the film Rambo.
Stallone has said that he thinks action movies should make your stomach clench, and boy did it. I literally had to stop myself from clenching in the middle of the movie, take a deep breath, and then of course I was back to clenching again.
MY FAVE THINGS.
Sniper rifle
Rambo grabbing the missionary guy by the throat
Mounted Machine gun
ARROWS!!!
P.S. – go see it in a good theater. The sound is amazing!!
