RAMBO

Sylvester Stallone Written by: Art Monterastelli, Sylvester Stallone Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz, Matthew Marsden, Graham McTavish, Paul Schulze Distributed by Lionsgate Film was released in the U.K. on February 22nd, 2008. Review by Oliver Pfeiffer

rating: 3

Make no mistake this isn€™t going to be a particularly intelligent, taxing or generally politically correct action thriller. This is Ramboremember and therefore all bets are off for non-stop bullet-burning no bars held explicit violence and bloody carnage. What sets it apart from the last sequel (the now chronologically incorrect Rambo III, 1988) is that it€™s actually pretty damn good (or bad?) and comes across as a rather indulgently gritty and guilty cinematic pleasure. Not withstanding the dated corny dialogue (€œKilling is as easy as breathing€), blurred political agenda and sometime turgid acting style Rambo,mark four, is a descent stab (pun intended) at a rebirth of one of the 80s most iconic heroes€™ and, alongside the latest Rockyinstalment, marks a welcome return of our now rugged 62 year old action hero Sylvester Stallone. The beauty of the Rambo films is that they actually have a political agenda. There not just simply orchestrated violence aimed at gun happy republicans (though Ronald Regan was a self-confessed devoted fan) and action fanatics alike, like there largely summed up to be. They had a serious undercurrent and important message to communicate about the sieving socio-political landscape and general disgruntled attitudes following the triumphantly unpopular Nixon led Vietnam War. First Blood(1982) was a broodingly tense and brilliantly simple depiction of an unstable, albeit well-intentional war hero returning home to an equally hostile environment that erupted into a one man mutiny against the uncaring disgruntled law. Rambo: First Blood Part II(1985) upped the ante and hurdled John Rambo back into Nam to rescue POW€™s, where he finds himself equally expendable by the corrupt American bureaucrats who are more concerned in covering up their prior mistakes. Rambo III launched our hero into Afghanistan to rescue his old commanding officer Colonel Trautman (Richard Crenna) from Russian extremists. Now in the fourth instalment, some twenty years later, with the mental backdrop of the controversial war in Iraq, Stallone is ready to fearlessly revive Rambo for the troubling 21st Century era. What becomes quickly apparent in this episode is that it is more brutally violent than the first three films put together! From the tortuous opening sequence where a group of innocent Thai villagers are pestered into a game of €˜mine walking€™ for the pleasure of a local infantry unit, to the unflinching massacre of an entire village (women and children et al), this is a film that dares to show us just how cruel the human soul can be. Rambo, now working in Thailand as a disenchanted snake capturer for a local entertainment group, is reluctantly persuaded to man a boat for a band of Christian Aid workers who wish to cautiously travel up stream to provide medicine for the poor peasants in war-ravaged Burma. Of course things rarely run smoothly in a Rambo film and, although the titular hero manages to get the group to their destination intact, they soon find themselves captured and held prisoner by the murderously unhinged sadistic soldiers. Upon hearing the details of the hostilities Rambo agrees to travel back up stream with a crew of mercenaries to rescue the team. Met with hostility be a feared former SAS commander (the frequently typed cast Graham McTavish), Rambo €˜insists€™ that he join the savage fight and help aid their seemingly impossible rescue mission. And that€™s the basic premise for this enjoyable action romp that utilises CGI assisted gore to add a breath of fresh realism to proceedings. Bones crack with more crunch, blood squirts with more zip, and torsos twist off with greater ease. The cinematography is grainier, the tough talk zanier, and Stallone has arguably put his heart and soul into his second revived iconic creation, (though we mustn€™t forget the character was originally created by novelist David Morrell). One of only two things that were noticeably missing from the film was a fearsomely tangible villain in the mould of a Brian Dennehy or a gruesome Steven Berkoff character creation. The other was the sad noticeable absence of the irreplaceable Richard Creena as veteran Col Samuel Trautman, who would have surely been included here (even though he would be 81 by now), had he not fallen victim to cancer in 2003. All in all Stallone has done the series proud in an exciting updated continuation of the mean vigilante series. Don€™t expect an enthralling political parable, but do expect customary die hard action sequences, meaner spirited spectacle and a fitting poetic conclusion that nicely sways the mood back to the opening, albeit superior, First Blood film.