RAMBO Lionsgate
Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey Karten
Grade: B-
Directed by: Sylvester Stallone
Written By: Art Monterastelli, Sylvester Stallone, characters by David Morrell
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz, Paul Schulze, Matthew Marsden, Graham McTavish, Reynaldo Gallegos, Jake La Botz, Tim Kang, Maung Maung Khin, Ken Howard
Screened at: AMC Empire, NYC, 1/26/08
Opens: January 25, 2008 We all know how difficult it is for actresses past the age of fifty to get roles in the movies. As for 60-year-olds, either forget it or set them up knitting sweaters for their grandchildren. For men, that’s another story. Men who hit seventy may be considered to have their left feet in the grave as they did in “The Bucket List,” but they have a lot of fun with their right ones—as did Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman as they circumvented the globe in the style that would have been the envy of Magellan. But Sylvester Stallone at “only” sixty-one can do better than that while staying put in only two countries. The sixty-one year old actor (and I use the word loosely) who can write (ditto) and who has muscles that would be the envy of ninety-six percent of twenty-year-olds (word not at all used loosely) is up to his old tricks twenty-five years after his annihilated one-half of the Asian continent. Even without the Bush upcoming tax rebate incentives, some Asian people have repopulated, however, the majority clan in one country not too happy about the presence of a minority group which they intend to wipe out , genocide style. Who can save the Karen tribe in Burma from the evil genocidal maniacs? Not Superman. He’s busy in Gotham. Not Captain Marvel. He doesn’t even exist. There’s only one fellow, a human being, a mensch. He’s Rambo, known to his friends as just John. John Rambo left the United States long before the Bush administration made its mark. He was drafted into the Vietnam War, spent time in the Far East and the Middle East, after which he went into semi-retirement in Northern Thailand where he eked out a living catching cobras for shows while spending years learning to pronounce the names of the Thai people. Given that job you’d think he’d light up when a bunch of Americans visit to offer him a freelance job transporting them by boat “upriver” into Burma, now called Myanmar (but never mind), Christian missionaries who want to save mankind from some inferior Eastern religions and administer medical attention. “Go home,” he tells them, until the fetching Sarah (Julie Benz) makes a better case than the uptight mission leader, Burnett (Paul Schulz). As they enter Burmese waters, they encounter a group of pirates who at gunpoint demand that they hand over the “whore” to them, making clear what they intend to do to the men in Rambo’s boat and later to her. But when Rambo wipes out the pirates, the good-soul Paul is furious, “It’s never right to take a human life.” And so it goes. Bows and arrows, beheadings and machine-gunning, stabbings in the abdomen, full-scale rebellions. You can tell who is the leader of the genocidal maniacs not by a black hat but by his being the only one who wears aviator shades and takes deep puffs on his cigarettes. You can tell that Paul, the uptight “it’s never right to take a life” missionary, is going to change, as he said he would, by bashing in the head of a thug with a rock. There is no irony to Rambo. He is who he is. He does change, from a peaceful contractor of a snake charmer to a man charmed by a woman to a man who just may want to go back to America to see what changes have been made in his home country. Will he go back to Thailand when he sees The State of the Union? What countries will he save when he’s 70? 80? Patience, fans, will be rewarded. Rated R. 93 minutes. © 2008 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
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