Movie Review - Rambo

Sometimes it is beter to leave a sleeping dog lie.

Sylvester Stallonlone had a pretty decent thing going with his Rambo franchise. There is nothing quite like a movie where the bad guy is so easy to hate, creating a hero that fights these bad men while saving someone really innocent like a kid, or a doctor helping kids, whatever. If only war/life was that simple.

I actually thought Rambo III would be the end of the franchise. Dedicated 'to the brave Afganese people' or some such thing, the movie certainly felt dated after the September 11 attacks. Kind of the same thing with Rocky IV...anymore there just isn't quite that fear of Russia in this country and so the movie lost a little bit from one generation to the next. Such is life I suppose.

Anyway, Rambo is probably non-stop roller coaster ride of adrenaline or some such nonsense. To me, the 'one-man force' movie has been done to death and likely through no fault of its own, the Rambo franchise just isn't quite as effective as it once was.

Stallone is a bit bulkier than he was in the previous installments (he was 62 when he made the movie and with that in mind he looks nothing short of amazing) and seems to be a little darker and a little less human than he was in the previous movies. To me, he just wasn't quite the guy I was pulling for in First Blood. I empathized with a war vet who was trying to make his life his own again after coming home. To me, that person was someone I could know.

The movie also certainly took advantage of new technologies not available in the 1980s. In the previous three movies there was plenty of shooting, plenty of violence, etc., but Rambo seemed to take it to another level. CG work now blew off heads, chopped off arms or legs, seemed to make the violence a bit more over the top (clever Stallone reference).

I can't exactly say I liked this movie, it just didn't do much for me. Rambo was a bit more hands-on with his killing craft, a bit bloodier with the end result and while it wasn't a horrible waste of time, it seemed a bit too much of a very simple action movie.

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Spoiler Alert

But as far as the franchise goes, I did enjoy how the John Rambo character finally went home at the movie's conclusion. That, to me anyway, went back to the First Blood roots. That seemed to make the Rambo character someone I could cheer for. It seemed completely appropriate, and I was actually caught off guard by it, while enjoying it all at the same time.

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As far as a rating, it is farily mindless, fairly stock, but with the ending being what sticks in my mind, it gets a bit of a waivering 2.5 stars out of 5, leaning a bit towards 2 stars.