May
30
“Rambo” DVD Review
Filed Under Movies, Political Films
The Western is a dead genre. Every year or two or three, a straight Western might make it to theaters, but the genre’s played itself out insofar as movies about cowboys and Indians go. Elements of the Western myth have since been appropriated by action/adventure, science fiction and comic book films — the lone hero who restores order to a lawless community by confronting “the other.” Did you see that one? It’s fascinating — if you’re a film geek anyway — to explore how the key components of the Western genre have been contemporized. Cowboys are now cops, stargazers or meta-humans. Indians are now mobsters, aliens or supervillains. The small town out West that’s beset by bureaucracy, corruption and some external threat personified by outlaws or savages is now a major metropolitan city, a galaxy or — ahem — another major metropolitan city. Justice is, as always, meted out by a hero who’s an outsider, someone who doesn’t operate within the law or “by the book.” The system is broken. In order to repair it, one must create new parameters for bringing about utopia.
By that definition, the Rambo movies are all Westerns at their core. The fourth chapter, economically titled “Rambo,” takes the fight to Myanmar (nee Burma), where Sylvester Stallone’s reluctant war machine goes on a rescue mission to save some Christian do-gooders from the country’s brutal military junta. And it’s a helluva flick. At 91 minutes, the film briskly builds to a crescendo of .50 caliber chain gun violence that rivals the final act of Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch.”
The carnage in the film is not like the toothless slapfighting in last summer’s PG-13 “Live Free or Die Hard.” I hate when filmmakers cop-out and “leave it up to the audience’s imagination” when it comes to screen violence. Why doesn’t the director just read me the script then? That’ll really give my imagination a workout. No, “Rambo” doesn’t leave anything up to your imagination. You’re shown every bullet hit, every exploded head, every dismembered body– almost all executed (zing!) with surprisingly effective CGI trickery. Yet the violence isn’t as gratuitous as it’s cathartic. The junta jerkstores’ idea of fun is making innocent villagers run across a mine field. You really find yourself hating these guys and wanting Rambo to reduce them to puddles of goo.
Stallone — who co-wrote and directed — hasn’t made a pure comic book like “Rambo: First Blood Part II.” Granted, there is an element of absurdity to the proceedings. Stallone’s in his 60s, in peak physical condition and nearly invincible; he takes a bullet to the shoulder, but it seems to do more damage to his shirt than to him. He’s also able to outrun the bomb blast from a WWII blockbuster that’s been sitting the jungle for six decades. Still, that’s all part of the myth of the Western hero. If anybody could do what Rambo can do, well, there wouldn’t be any need for Rambo.
I’m terrible about watching all the special features on DVDs. I used to do it religiously, but after the one millionth canned, EPK interview, I got a little burned out. The only featurette I watched on the disc was “It’s a Long Road: Resurrection of an Icon.” The film’s been in development for as long as Indy 4, but they didn’t spend too much time on the different incarnations that had been proposed over the years. No mention was made at all of the Rambo vs. Osama bin Laden concept. Stallone did discuss a potential idea that would’ve sent Rambo to Mexico to rescue a kidnapped girl…not nearly as compelling as taking on bin Laden though.
When it comes to hellholes with rat-bastard regimes, Burma works quite nicely as a shooting gallery for John Rambo. That being said, watching a mythical Western hero — in any genre — achieve what cannot be done in real life never loses its appeal.
-Brad Lohan
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