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Rambo
But then, two weeks after taking some human rights missionaries up the river, he finds out that they've been captured and held hostage. When a priest comes to him asking for help, John Rambo, super-soldier, knows what he must do...
Starring Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz, Matthew Marsden, Graham McTavish, Reynaldo Gallegos, Jake La Botz
Directed by Sylvester Stallone ('Rocky Balboa')
Written by Sylvester Stallone, Kevin Bernhardt
Action | 1hr 32mins | Rated (R18) | Contains Graphic Violence & Offensive Language | Origin: USA | Official Site »
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Flicks review
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3
Possibly the most violent movie ever.
In the stuff of ready-made film-geek legend, the director of Rambo sat in a chair marked, in eBay-ready mission-statement, “John Rambo”.
This proves doubly apt when watching Rambo. On the one hand, few actors have been so immortally linked with a role as Stallone has been to Rambo, and fewer still have embraced that bond as fervently as does he.
But equally, the gag is appropriate because this is what it would be like if John Rambo had somehow arrived in our world, and taken it into his head to direct a movie. Equal parts dunderheaded and noble, misguidedly horrific and fist-pumpingly awesome, Rambo doesn’t veer between unpleasant and vicariously righteous so much as charge bodily through both.
While mainly eschewing the winking fan-service that blunted Die Hard’s return to theatres, Rambo is unmistakably canon, in style as well as subject. However the strongest formulaic throwback isn’t to the previous First Blood pictures (a truly ballsy, timely salvo would’ve been to revisit those films’ critique of America’s treatment of her soldiers) so much as to the black sheep of 80s action: Death Wish and its vigilante ilk.
Here, the rhythm is simple: a series of violent, degenerate assaults on innocent populace and audience sensibility alike, then an orgy of retributive bloodletting in which right triumphs over wrong but emerges panting, sweating and coated in blood not its own.
No film of this ilk can ever survive scrutiny from all corners: its politics, by necessity, are those of division and demonization. Someone, however they may differ from us, has to get it in the neck. To get this formula right, a film must leave audiences with a queasy feeling of having taken part in a ritual both cleansing and less than entirely wholesome.
And John Rambo, bless his heart, has made a movie that pretty much hits the nail on the head.
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The people's reviews
6 reviews
Press Reviews
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Christchurch Press [Charlie Gates]
1
The film is shamelessly exploitative and manipulative in how it attempts to manoeuvre the audience to join in this celebration of violence.
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Empire
Rambo could have been a satisfying romp - wherein bad dialogue and cardboard characters can be forgiven - but for the sin of making the main man step to the sidelines in favour of charisma-free fillers. Bad move, Sly...
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New York Times
The movie does have its own kind of blockheaded poetry.
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NZ Herald [Francesca Rudkin]
2
Rambo films are, after all, about entertainment and body count and rather than dwelling on the plight of the Burmese people he prefers to set about shocking us into a numb state with as much over-the-top, gruesome and gratuitous violence as he can muster.
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Premiere
Rambo is surprisingly effective as an action movie precisely because the villains seem truly dangerous and the "mission" truly a death wish.
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TV3 [Daniel Rutledge]
4
1/2 Rambo is not what you’d generally call a ‘good movie’, but it is a ridiculously excessive exercise in cinematic brutality which goes way, way further than any fan could have hoped for. As far as no-brainer action flicks go, this is about as good as it gets folks.
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Variety
Stallone (who looks fit but mostly keeps his shirt on) has no intention of bogging the action down, but it's still a notably cheerless exercise, without knowing winks or stabs (pardon the expression) at humor. It is in all respects, rather, a completely workmanlike effort.
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