Rambo.

A world-weary John Rambo helps a group of missionaries against his better judgment. 

Release Date: Jan. 25, 2008. Running Time: 91 minutes. Screenplay: Art Monterastelli, Sylvester Stallone. Producer: Avi Lerner, Kevin King Templeton, John Thompson. Director: Sylvester Stallone.


THE PLOT:

Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) is still living in Thailand, subsisting by capturing cobras for local snake shows, when he's approached by a group of missionaries. Michael Burnett (Paul Schulze) wants to hire him to take them upriver into Burma, to provide medical aid to those targeted by the controlling regime. Rambo refuses, telling the missionaries that they should "go home." Michael's fiancée, Sarah (Julie Benz), refuses to accept that answer, arguing that saving lives is worth the risk, and her earnest sincerity convinces him to change his mind.

Ten days later, Rambo receives another visitor: Father Marsh (Ken Howard), the pastor of the missionaries' church. Marsh informs him that the group was captured, and that he's hired mercenaries to attempt a rescue. The job is just to transport the mercenaries upriver and then wait for their return. But having taken the missionaries into danger, Rambo feels compelled to join in the effort to get them out again...

Rambo loses patience with the naivete of missionary leader Michael (Paul Schulze).

CHARACTERS:

Rambo: That wisecrack-spewing joker we watched in the third film? Thankfully, he's gone, and the real Rambo is back. As in the first film, Rambo barely speaks, conveying his thoughts through his reactions (and sometimes non-reactions) to other characters. When he does talk, his voice seems to well up from a dark place, his every syllable laced with rage. He seems offended by the mere idea of the missionaries, people who think they can make the world better and who can't accept "what is." Despite this, some part of him is touched by Sarah's sincerity, and his attachment to her fuels his actions for the rest of the movie.

Sarah: She's naive but not weak, as she shows by refusing to allow Rambo to brush her off. When he snarls at her to go back to her "good life," she isn't cowed. She argues, and her words about how "saving a life isn't a waste of your life" sway him enough to agree to escort the missionaries - something he does explicitly for her. Rambo's attraction to her never comes across as a romantic one; it's more as if she represents a ray of light in the otherwise bleak world he inhabits.

Michael: The leader of the missionaries, he initially comes across as just another wimpy do-gooder. Remarkably, the character emerges as more. When captured, he does not turn into a sniveling coward. Instead, when the mercenaries arrive, he doesn't want to leave unless Sarah is also rescued. After one mercenary is injured by a land mine, he stops them from removing his boot (which would lead to rapid blood loss), and all but pushes the man's beefy comrades aside to lend aid.

Lewis: The mercenary leader, a former SAS agent who spends the trip upriver complaining incessantly. As with Michael, he seems set up to be a 2-dimensional cardboard foil, present to make Rambo look better... and as with Michael, there ends up being considerably more to his character. His planning of the rescue is meticulous, and even his decision to withdraw once the initial timetable has elapsed is strategically correct. Any doubts about his mettle are dispelled by the finale, in which he behaves downright heroically.

Major Tint: Former Burmese resistance fighter Maung Maung Khin agreed to play the villain of the piece in order to raise awareness of the horrors occurring in his country. Major Tint receives little direct characterization - I actually had to look up the character's name - instead acting as a personification of the ugliness revealed by war. He casually smokes a cigarette as civilians are gunned down in a rice field. Explosions are reflected in his sunglasses as he looks on calmly. There's no personal relationship between Tint and Rambo, no taunting or threats. They meet only once, and briefly. Nevertheless, there's a sense that when Rambo faces him he is actually facing a part of himself - a catharsis that just wasn't there when he dispatched the chattier villains of the previous two films.

Col. Trautman: The late Richard Crenna's Trautman is paid tribute to by a mid-film dream sequence that samples some of his key lines across the previous three films. The sequence also uses footage from First Blood's original ending, in which Trautman killed Rambo, to hammer home the idea of Rambo being at war with himself. Trautman's "Full Circle" speech from Rambo III ends up being a key component of both scene and film, and it is used to far better effect here than in the movie it was actually shot for.

Sarah (Julie Benz) finds herself in far over her head...

THOUGHTS:

2008's Rambo continues the series' tradition of every entry following a completely different title scheme. More importantly, it's the best movie in the series since 1982's First Blood. That's admittedly a low bar, so I'll go one better: With Rambo, director/star Sylvester Stallone has brought the series full circle, delivering a genuinely good motion picture that recalls the original in its lean, spare structure and grim tone.

The story is conveyed with minimal dialogue, just enough to tell us who the characters are and what the situation is. The violence, when it comes, is brutal. This movie is every bit as violent as the second and third films were - But there's nothing exciting about the gunfire and explosions here. Instead, the action is fast, sudden, and savage. For the most part, this feels entirely correct for the setting and situation. To put it simply: A genocide should not be comfortable.

This is the first entry in the series not to be scored by Jerry Goldsmith. Goldsmith's main theme is used to good effect, but the original music is by Brian Tyler. Tyler's score is not as good as Goldsmith's work in the first two films, but it's still atmospheric and effective - and far better than any of the generic material Goldsmith created for Rambo III.

The film is titled Rambo, and it ultimately is about him as a character. The key scene is the one in which he forges a new blade while reflecting to himself in voice over: "War is in your blood... You didn't kill for your country. You killed for yourself. God's never going to make that go away." Saving Sarah is saving whatever good may rest within himself - but to do that, he needs to accept and even embrace his own darkness.

For all the film gets right, there are some flaws. Sarah is too idealized to be entirely convincing; and while Julie Benz's nonverbal acting in the second half is fine, she struggles with some of the heavy-handed speeches early on. With the sole exception of Gavin McTavish's Lewis, the mercenaries Rambo accompanies receive about as much characterization as your average video game NPC. Finally, while most of the violence is effective, there are moments that cross the line into exploitation. Stallone later prepared an Extended Cut that beefed up the characterization and pulled back a bit on the gore, and that is probably the better version to watch... although it should be said that, save for the above reservations, the theatrical version is more than good enough as-is.

General Tint (Maung Maung Khin) calmly looks on as his forces burn a village to the ground.

OVERALL:

I think the highest praise to offer 2008's Rambo is that it met with the approval David Morrell, author of the 1972 novel that created the character. He endorsed the film, stating that it captured the character in a way that none of the other movies had. The "full circle" speech may have been delivered in Rambo III, but it really applies here, with an ending that brings the series back to its beginnings.

I'll keep an open mind for Rambo V: Last Blood. But given how perfect a close-out the ending to this (surprisingly good!) movie is, I can't help but suspect Stallone should have let this franchise end here.


Overall Rating: 8/10.

Previous Film: Rambo III
Next Film: Rambo - Last Blood

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