Rambo

The hardest action movie of all time delivers incredible brutality, presenting the legendary hero as we have never seen him before: full of sadness, anger, and resignation, only a woman will put him back on his feet and show what he is made of. Stallone knew exactly what to shoot and how to shoot it. The plot is simple, dynamic, and more than enough. The action is balls to the wall, and the fact that they highlight these killings as a result of the war-torn Burma only helps the cause. A film that is unbeatable for fans and a must-see. A success on all fronts for Stallone and confirmation that he is far from finished. And when he stands in a jeep behind an anti-aircraft machine gun, feeding it with fist-sized bullets and firing a salvo, you realise you have never seen anything like it before. So far, the best film of the year. (22/02/2008)

Rambo has returned to his roots, quite literally. I mean it in the sense that Rambo is no longer just a hero mowing down everyone around him, but once again he is the one being chased by his past. He is also being pursued by people who want to ride the river all the way to Burma. Burma is a war zone, Rambo knows that, but there are still those who don't heed his advice. The crew of those who want to help without weapons doesn't end up very well, and the soldiers who later bring him remind him why he actually lives. By the way, doesn't that one mercenary, Okamura, remind you of someone? Realistic, gritty, excellent. I'm quite curious if there will really be a fifth film where this legend could end. (01/12/2013)

It’s been a very, very long time since I regretted that a film about nothing other than killing isn’t longer. The last Rambo is a B-movie with Russian digital effects shrouded in nostalgia that is more physically intense than any megalomaniacal blockbuster by Michael Bay. Two spectacular scenes (the first ascent with a bow, the bomb), perfect genre purity and the character of John Rambo – that’s what it’s all about and it’s more than enough. “Don’t say anything and just go.” Nothing more needs to be said about the closing musical motif by Jerry Goldsmith. Had Stallone added more minutes and developed the characters more, this could have been the best action film of the year. (25/02/2008)

The eighties strike back! The most brutal pensioner on the planet makes a return, this time staying somewhere half way between the believable rawness of part one and the B-movie over-the-topness of part two. What it lacks in terms of story, it makes up for with high marks for style of presentation. It’s true that at the beginning you laugh a couple of times over occasional laughable dialogs “worthy of thought", but you have fun all the same. However, after the “metaphor" with the box, it all reverts to its old ways. Just considerably more brutally. Much more brutally. The elderly ferryman is as efficient at his work as he was when he was young, and especially Rambo’s fighting symbiosis with the School Boy could have done with a greater number of scenes. Although Stallone as a screenwriter was disappointing, as a director he maintains solid craft until the very end by scattering images reminiscent of past episodes throughout this movie. And as an actor? A classic. One expression, a hard stare, muscles pumped up with steroids (he really needs that canon at the end because he couldn’t even put the logs he has instead of fingers on any regular trigger), excellent physique and his one and only acting invention of “half-closed eyes" for expressing sadness in scenes where he isn’t allowed to kill anybody. An A-grade brutal B-movie with a rejuvenated testosterone-pumped mastodon with all the trimmings. And if you don’t like that, then, in Rambo’s words: Go home. This makes the fourth Rambo the second best in the series. Who would have believed that about two years ago? --- P.S.: Thank you for the strangely missing episode number which made the Hardened Viewer festival at the Aero movie theater in Prague even more fun than expected. (19/02/2008)

It is evident that Rambo's pump is working for now, he doesn't need a cardiologist and he’s aging with his own grace, i.e. he doesn't argue with it in any way and takes it with gusto. The problem is that from the second episode it follows the same routine (with minor nuances): somewhere something has gone wrong, Rambo is asked for help, he flinches for a while, but then in a fit of altruism he gives in and a liberating, uncompromising fight ensues until the closing credits. Obviously it would be naive to expect anything else from him, but for me, the same tea, brewed for the third time, just doesn't taste as it should. That something is a "total carnage" and "slaughter" is no measure of the quality of a film, although I admit that the rawness, filthiness and to some extent realism of the action is probably unparalleled in the current cinematic mainstream. In fact, if I wanted to make a comparison, Rambo's final "heavy machine gun sermon" looks like a short sequence from Saving Private Ryan (the moment when the landing boat opens up on Omaha Beach and the soldiers inside are under machine gun fire), except that here it is stretched out to about 10 minutes, with all clean gunshots and falling body parts, which gives it a surreal dimension that cannot be taken seriously. For lovers of brutal action sequences, this must be nirvana. PS: If this film pissed off the real Burmese despotic junta, I'd give it 10 stars. (01/03/2008)