Rambo (Special Edition + Digital Copy)
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Actor: Paul Schulze, Sylvester StalloneBrand: STALLONE,SYLVESTER
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language)
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.40:1
Running Time: 92 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-05-27
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Lionsgate
DVD Reviews of Rambo (Special Edition + Digital Copy)
DVD Review: War is in my blood
Summary: 5 Stars
It was rather simple and obvious, and he was speaking to himself, but every so often it plays in my head, and realizing my very strong interest in it, I always see him as speaking directly to me:
"War is in your blood"
War is in my blood. [...] I am irrevocably obsessed with it, as I am a military historian.
"Rambo" was something I didn't care at all about, until a YouTube video featuring one of my favorite Iced Earth songs features scenes from this movie in it. Particularly, the final action sequence.
And so that drew me in to see it.
Comparing him to the Rambo I saw later in "First Blood" and "First Blood II" I see a journey that is nearly complete. The 'aw-shucks' sort of kid in the beginning of "First Blood" hardened and closed up like a stone by this film. John Rambo rarely says anything, and it's not for wont of sparing the audience his heavily slurred voice.
Right from the start, Stallone indicates he is using the backdrop of the film to highlight the 60 year running civil war in Myanmar/Burma, largely between the reigning military junta and the Karin people. We get lots of sequences (not real footage, but part of the film) of 'games' the military plays, by tossing mines into shallow riverbanks, and having prisoners run across, and placing bets on which ones will make it across without hitting a mine. We also get a sequence of a raid on a village, "recruitment" as it is, as the military snatches away young boys to be broken in as soldiers, and threatens the villagers with extermination if they try to resist.
John Rambo, meanwhile, is a practical man, who realizes he can't do anything about it, and that seemingly he doesn't care, even though Sylvester Stallone clearly does.
And what really stood out for me in this was that Stallone is very clear in his message that while peace is good, and it's very insightful and honorable to go to countries such as Burma with only peaceful intentions of medicine and religion, quite frankly, as Rambo says, you aren't changing a thing in Burma with peace.
"Rambo" makes it clear that Burma is among the worst of Asian countries, in a perpetual state of war, and that the oppressive military runs rampant over the villages, which are presumably Karin though the movie never explicitly shows them, perhaps in a message that the Karin people are not so vastly different from the rest of the Burmese. If it isn't the military, it's pirates who are not willing to negotiate money over the chance to rape hot white ass (Sarah's ass), prompting Rambo to kill again, perhaps the first time in years.
Once the missionaries (lead among them being Sarah and Michael, played by Julie Benz and Paul Schulze) arrive at a village and do good work, they are attacked by the military seemingly within hours, and the survivors captured because they are white.
This prompts the core of the movie to unfold; action violence, as Rambo shuttles a team of plucky mercenaries, memorably the asshole Brit, into Burma, and eventually goes himself to their aid.
This starts a series of action scenes that does not stop until the end, from the first encoutner during a second scene featuring the mine-running game (and, quite frankly, a goddamn awesome 'trick-shot' with Rambo hitting a Burmese soldier with an arrow, and sending him flying several feet to explode on a landmine in the water), a stealthy-nighttime rescue mission, and a dash through the woods to escape, where the Brit gets his leg shredded by a mortar, and Rambo's use of a Claymore to throw off the Burmese military and detonate a World War II bomb left unexploded in the jungle.
This all leads up to the final action sequence, in which the mercenaries and missionaries (minus the sniper and Sarah) are lined up about to be executed, when Rambo appears to the rescue, with a .50 caliber mounted machine gun at hand.
When I had complained about "First Blood"'s lack of genre-defining violence, I fear I may have been spoiled by this movie, though I was at least understanding in recognizing that what I saw here could possibly never have been shown in 1982.
For about ten minutes at the end of "Rambo", we're given quite possibly the absolute goriest, most realistically bloody action sequence ever depicted in any movie of its kind; from the start with Rambo swinging a machete hard enough to decapitate a man in one swift stroke, to the gore-soup staining the face-guard of the machine gun. Very literally, heads are exploded, bodies have huge holes shot through them, and limbs fly off or simple crumble beneath the person as the .50 caliber machine gun's effect on human flesh is depicted in gross, yet accurate detail, as not only Rambo wreaks hell on the machine gun, but the sniper unloads, and the mercenaries escape and start killing with bare fists, rocks, grenades, and AK47s.
Eventually the Karin Rebels show up, showering the Burmese with mortars and guns, and the battle winds down with a Burmese attack boat going up in flames, followed by the main bad-guy general being quickly disemboweled by Rambo as he tries to escape.
And so with this action sequence, Stallone entertains and teaches, with gore that is excessive and yet surgical, going well overboard by comparison to its older features, and yet perfectly fitting the tone and context of the film. Its message is clear; the situation in Burma cannot be diplomatically resolved---it must be resolved with war, against the military regime. Even Michael, who at first whined about violence, and even yelled at Rambo for killing the pirates who threatened to rape Sarah and kill them all, ends up pouncing on a Burmese soldier, and beating him to death with a large rock.
My only major complaint about this final action sequence was that seemingly overwhelmingly Burmese-military-death based, as only about two or three of the mercenaries died, and very few Karin Rebels were shown being hit by military fire.
John Rambo was a man in utter denial. He went to Vietnam and died. He was trained to be the absolute best of fighting men, and when he returned, he returned to rejection by his society, and near death as he put his military training to test in "First Blood". Since his many adventures, he has tried to bury his past, and end his violent lifestyle, hiding away from the rest of the world in the backwater jungles of Thailand.
By the end of the movie, in a scene reminiscent of the opening scene of "First Blood", he is back in America, arriving on his father's farm, and seeking out the very last link to his former life, as he had in "First Blood" seeking out the last comrade in his unit. By the end of it, Rambo has clearly come to terms with the fact he stated himself mid-way through the film:
"War is in your blood"
Description of Rambo (Special Edition + Digital Copy)
The next chapter finds Rambo recruited by missionaries to protect them during a humanitarian aid effort on behalf of the persecuted Karen people of Burma. After the missionaries are taken prisoner by Burmese soldiers, Rambo gets a second impossible job: rescue the missionaries in the midst of a civil war.If you've been wondering what ever happened to ex?Green Beret superwarrior John Rambo since he singlehandedly shot up a Pacific Northwest town (First Blood, 1982), returned to the jungles of 'Nam to free U.S. POWs held long after war's end (Rambo: First Blood Part II, 1985), and interrupted the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan long enough to blow lots of stuff up and rescue his old commandant from the Reds (Rambo III, 1988), then Rambo (2008) is for you. Without so much as a IV to dilute the brand name, Rambo--which is what most of us called the second, most iconic film in the series--may aspire to open a new era for a pop legend. But it's a thoroughly mechanical attempt to reanimate a franchise that, absent the anger, frustration, and self-loathing of the post-Vietnam years, has no meaning or purpose. For some time now Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) has been putt-putting along the Thai-Burmese border in a longboat, catching exotic snakes to sell. As for the 60-year civil war in Burma between the brutal government and the Karen independence movement, he ignores it. Enter a party of American missionaries whose dewy blond spokeswoman (Dexter's Julie Benz) asks Rambo to haul them upriver so that they can bring medical aid to the insurgents. After the requisite number of monosyllabic refusals, he does. Soon afterward the do-gooders are in a world of hurt, and he's summoned to lead a squad of mercenaries on a rescue mission.
As storytelling, the latest Rambo is the most bare-bones of the bunch. Rambo has little to say, so it's especially galling that Stallone, as director and co-writer, obliges him to have essentially the same conversation at three different points (the final distillation: "Live for nothing or die for something"). The Burmese army goons seem in competition to commit the most hideous atrocity (e.g., child skull-crushing underfoot), the better to justify the eventual, lovingly protracted spectacle of them being eviscerated by high-powered weaponry. Although shot in Thailand, the movie has mostly been photographed in brown, reducing any particular sense of place but, perhaps, perversely increasing our gratitude for the splashes of purple whenever hot metal tatters flesh. --Richard T. Jameson
Beyond Rambo
 Complete list of Rambo movies on DVD and Blu-ray |  Soundtrack |  Rambo: The Complete Collector's Set |
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