Rambo

I was seven years old when John Rambo took America by force in First Blood. It was 1982. I was probably ten or eleven before I actually saw the movie on VHS, and I still remember it – where I was, who I was with, what we were eating. It’s probably been over fifteen years since I last saw that movie, and I still remember the music and many specific scenes. It left an impression.

Then came Rambo 2 and 3. I remember the very basics of each movie, but most of both movies are obscured by the acrid taste of bile that rose in my throat as I became more and more disgusted by the movies. Sure, even I’ll admit that First Blood was over-the-top Hollyweird bullshit, but it was almost feasible. The sequels just got more and more ridiculous, as if they said to themselves, “Hey, we have all this money. What can we buy and stick into this movie? A helicopter? Sweet! A TANK?? Fuckin’ A! Oh, and order up a shitload of those exploding arrows, and make sure his knife is even bigger than before, with more crap stuffed into the handle. We’ll figure out some way for him to use it when he’s not in the helicopter or the tank. God, this is going to be AWESOME!”

Well, I didn’t think it was awesome. I thought it was idiotic, and that was before I was in the Rangers or had any real military training. I felt the same way about the Rocky movies. The first one was great, and they just went downhill from there.

When I heard that they were dusting off the franchise and releasing Rambo, I was skeptical. I thought I might rent it on DVD when I really needed a fix of gratuitous violence. Then I watched Rocky Balboa. I was so impressed by that movie. I don’t know that Sly managed to get back to the roots of the story, but he did a damned fine job trying. As I watched it, I thought “This is the kind of movie that made Stallone. This is what he does. This is all he should have ever done.”

I resolved to see Rambo in the theatre, just to see if he managed to get back to the heart of the character the same as he’d done with Rocky.

(Skip the next paragraph to if you want to avoid minor plot spoilers.)

I watched Rambo last Friday. I had mixed reactions. It is very violent. I can’t think of another movie that depicts that much carnage in that much visceral detail. Like First Blood, the entire plot really isn’t plausible, but it’s almost feasible. I liked that they chose to put Rambo back to basics. He doesn’t have exploding arrowheads or a massive knife full of survival goodies. He has a compound bow with regular arrows, and he uses a hammer and anvil to make a basic machete. I only called “bullshit” at one point in the movie, where he uses a claymore to detonate an old inert WWII aerial bomb in the jungle. I don’t know a lot about such ordinance, but I think its blast radius was excessive, to say the least.

I enjoyed the movie despite its obvious political statements and agenda concerning the civil war in Burma. I thought it was a great touch to use the original music from First Blood. It invoked powerful nostalgia. In my opinion, it’s by far the best of the sequels. However, Rambo did not instill the same feeling of awe that I got from First Blood.

I just couldn’t connect with the character as intimately as I did in First Blood. Maybe it was because he wasn’t fighting alone in Rambo. Maybe it was because he wasn’t as active. He didn’t get as up close and personal, except in a few scenes. (He still hauled and kicked a lot of ass. Don’t get me wrong – I pray I can be in that kind of shape when I’m 61.) But it just wasn’t the same as the first movie. The “one-against-many” element wasn’t there. I didn’t sympathize with Rambo’s plight. I went into it thinking, “It’s the last movie. They might actually kill the character,” but he was never in any apparent danger. There was no moment where I held my breath and wanted to close my eyes because I thought he was going to die. He was barely injured during the entire movie.

In summary, I liked the movie, and I may even buy it on DVD. Maybe. If you like violence and gore, you’ll enjoy this movie for the battle scenes. If blood, guts, guns, and violence make you queasy, then you’d best see something else, because this movie is graphic enough to give a person nightmares.