Presents

Rambo (2008)

First of all, let's settle some confusion that's spreading among you Rambo novices out there.  This is Rambo, the original movie was called First Blood, the sequel was Rambo: First Blood 2, and then there was, of course, Rambo 3.  This one is simply Rambo, and it's the fourth in the series.  Alrighty, now that the movie history lesson is over, on to the good stuff.

  In this fourth installment, we find Rambo still in Asia, still pumped up...even overly so, but more on that later...and still, apparently, haunted by the ghosts of Vietnam.  Well, when a small group of Christian missionaries enlist Rambo to take them into a war zone, where genocide is being committed, in order to aid the victims, Rambo drops them off...of course, not before having to kill some Burmese pirates who cross his path enroute.  Well, I think you see what's coming next, the missionaries are taken hostage by the evil military of Burma, and now the church leaders have hired mercenaries to get them out of the country.  Well, since he knows where they were dropped of, it's now Rambo who's called on to take our mercs into the fray.  Where, naturally, he becomes involved and must, once again, take on the military of a small country, nearly single-handedly.  The main difference in this and the other installments of the series, is the violence.  Where the other movies were pretty violent, this one is graphically so.  I'm not faint of heart when it comes to gore, but Rambo takes it to a place that's out beyond violence and into absurd.  People blowing up, literally, heads exploding, appendages flying every which direction, it's really far more violent than the other Rambos...by far!!

   Rambo is a movie that seems to be designed for the young people out there.  People who might not have had the chance to see Sly in all his ripped glory, in theatres originally, can now pay their money and check out Rambo as it was meant to be seen.  The problem here is that Sly is now over 60, and, despite being in amazing shape, you're going to notice a difference between this and the last time Sly donned the headband.  Check it out:

Here's Sly back in the 80s:

And here's Sly today:

Now, besides getting a bit older, Sly's head seems to have gotten wider.  In fact, all of him (from the waist up) seems to have gotten wider.  All the rumors swirling about steroids and human growth hormone, seem to have some justification, Sly is HUGE!  Now, once you get past that...and you will...Rambo is still a pretty engaging action movie.  And, to quote my good friend Joe Bob Briggs, there's not a ton of plot to get in the way of the story here either!  This is a fairly straight forward shoot-em-up movie, good guys are all white dudes, the bad guys are all little yellow dudes, the good guys are all there pure of heart and mission, the bad guys are all about killing and raping for fun, so, it's pretty clear which side you should be rooting for and which side you want to see lose.  And, despite there being a huge deficit of acting, you'll find yourself cheering the good guys on on more than one occasion.  Rambo isn't the best movie I've ever seen, but (after the horror that was Cloverfield) it's far from the worst!  I'm giving Rambo three out of four cigars, because despite being imperfect, I can still see myself renting this when it hits DVD, or sitting down when it comes to HBO.  If you're looking for some deep story and fine acting, look somewhere else, if you'd like to see some shit explode and some bad guys get their asses handed back to them, then you'll enjoy this just fine!  So, until next time, when I'll be hitting the gym to try to get as ripped as Sly, remember that the best movies are bad movies.