"Rambo": Movie Review

There will be blood. And severed heads and shattering skulls and slopping intestines and flying limbs and ripped jugulars, too. That's what pretty much describes John Rambo's return to the screen in the fourth installment, simply entitled "Rambo." In fact, simplicity could, more or less, describe this unapologetically neoconservative fantasy in which the good guys (emphasis on the "guys" part) all speak with American or British accents and shoot first, then skip the asking-questions-later part.

We join John Rambo--tortured Vietnam veteran who looks nothing like John McCain--hunting snakes in South Eastern Asia with a dexterity that could easily be that of a Zen master. Enter a group of American missionaries carrying supplies to war-ravaged Burma ("Myanmar" is nowhere in sight), soliciting help from the mentally-scarred warrior. The rest of the movie involves a capture and a rescue, and from the set up, I assume that you can guess who is captured and who does the rescuing.

What makes this movie more than a standard action film is the level of violence prevalent throughout. One thing about evangelicals (think Stallone and Mel Gibson) is that they sure make violent movies. Mr. Stallone does not flinch at portraying children being executed or even mutilated; rape is one of the movie's motifs.

But, somehow, the violence seems cathartic to the audience, and I don't doubt that it seemed cathartic to Mr. Stallone as well. This is not to say that the movie is brilliant. I enjoyed it no more than I enjoyed "The Hills Have Eyes." The only thing about either movie which I enjoy is seeing the villains be dispatched in the end, and their end in "Rambo is particularly satisfying.
Poetic justice has never been more just, or less poetic.