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Kill One for the Gipper
20 years later, our bandanna’d national treasure is still kicking ass and taking names
by J. Hoberman
January 29th, 2008 2:25 PM

I’ll show you trickle-down economics!
Lions Gate Entertainment
Rambo
Directed by Sylvester Stallone
Lionsgate Films, now playing

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He's back—unflagging, indestructible, super-colossal. Through this epoch-defining figure one may refract American history. John Updike has his Rabbit Angstrom and Philip Roth his Nathan Zuckerman, but who are they compared to John Rambo, woken from a 20-year sleep in Rambo: \"A Film,\" as the credits have it, \"By Sylvester Stallone.\"

A veteran now in his 60s (as well as of them), Rambo has chosen to spend his retirement in deepest Thailand, dreamily fishing with a bow and arrow or capturing cobras for a backwater snake show. He's still wearing his trademark bandanna (over a wig hat, unless the still-luxuriant coiffure is a function of the HGH that the star has admitted using). More to the point, he remains unreconciled, still nursing that thousand-yard stare and schlepping a cargo of resentment. Rambo's first line of dialogue is the traditional \"Fuck off!,\" delivered over his shoulder at his jabbering gook boss.

What crisis has disturbed the creature's slumber and brought him back to life? Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Hugo Chávez? Somewhere in the Ramboverse, there's been a chemical-weapon attack—it's the crisis in Burma! Accompanied by newsreels too grisly for the Human Rights Film Festival, Rambo explains that Christian farmers have been singled out for extermination, their rice paddies turned into killing fields. Rambo is approached by a church-sponsored group of idealistic American doctors looking for a way to enter Burma and save a bit of the world. Will he ferry them upriver? \"Fuck the world,\" he tells the group's wimpy leader (Paul Schulze).

The expedition's lone woman (Julie Benz) tries to reason with the Rambot: \"We're here to make a difference,\" she insists. \"What is is what is,\" he explains Buddhistically. But when she remarks that he must have believed in something once, Rambo relents. Naturally, his worst fears about human nature are immediately confirmed once their boat is attacked by slavering river pirates who want nothing more than to kidnap and ravish the White Woman. Rambo liquefies the scum. The Christians are appalled (\"Taking a life is never right,\" the Schulze character whines), but the mission continues.

A sort of parody Apocalypse Now, complete with listless coochie dancers entertaining the Burmese troops, the movie finds its own heart of darkness once Rambo drops the doctors in Burma. No sooner have they begun nursing the maimed and ministering to the mutilated when ka-BLAAAAM!!!!!! The local storm troopers attack, stabbing children, blowing up houses, massacring old people, and making off with the WW—the village left looking like Jonestown after the Kool-Aid.

Rambo has the feel of a terminal Vietnam flick. The absence of choppers hovering like angels overhead only reinforces the sense of abandonment in this green hell. Smeary black-and-white clips from Rambo: First Blood Part II establish historical perspective, such as it is, and function as the turgid nightmare from which the hero is trying to awake—and which is, in fact, interrupted by another pastor pleading with him to help rescue the captives. Strapping on his mega-bowie knife and leading a band of screwball mercenaries into the jungle (\"Live for nothing or die for something\"), Rambo penetrates the storm trooper stronghold just as the rape orgy commences and initiates his own bloodbath. It's a reasonably entertaining spectacle replete with half-animated action sequences in which CGI bodies disintegrate like breakaway bottles.

After 20 years in remission, Rambo remains tough enough to rip out a guy's throat with one hand, smart enough to assemble something like a tactical nuclear device while galumphing through the underbrush with Burmese police dogs nipping at his keister, and noble enough to pose for Mount Rushmore. He finishes the job and, his curiosity whetted by the White Woman, goes home to \"the world.\" But this is where, 26 years ago, First Blood began—can the Rambodyssey really be over?

At once cowboy and Indian, GI and VC, Rambo was arguably the great pop icon of the Vietnam War. Or rather, this puppy-eyed, Nautilus-built killing machine was the great pop icon of the decade-after Vietnam War revisionism that characterized the reign of Ronald Reagan. It's as though the ongoing political discourse, with some politicians claiming to be the new Reagan and others denying it, had conjured his reappearance: Rambo redux.

Back in 1982, First Blood gave the cliché of the psychotic Vietnam vet a novel twist. Driven to run amok in the Pacific Northwest, Stallone's sweet but implacable Green Beret was misunderstood and unappreciated. He was a victim not only of the war overseas but the one at home— another longhair vagrant persecuted by the pigs. First Blood was constructed to appeal to hawks and doves alike and, however schematic, struck a responsive chord. It was an unexpected hit, the movie that dethroned ET as the nation's No. 1 box-office attraction and gave Stallone his first real success outside the Rocky cycle, returning him to the charmed circle of bankable stars.

Three years later, Rambo: First Blood Part II provided Stallone the muscle to elbow aside Clint Eastwood at the top of the list. Sprung from the prison where his earlier rampage landed him, the Green Beret extraordinaire was recruited to parachute back into Nam on a 36-hour mission to find and photograph 2,500 MIAs (who are actually POWs). Bucking orders, he leads them to freedom. The scenario effectively reworked the previous year's Uncommon Valor and Missing in Action, with a greater body count and more explicit meaning. \"Sir, do we win this time?\" Rambo plaintively asks his Green Beret guru. Affirmative to the max!

New morning in America: Rambo was the fetish rattle brandished by our national medicine man. During the movie's third boffo week, Hezbollah terrorists hijacked a TWA flight en route from Athens to Rome and forced the plane to land in Beirut, holding it there for 17 days. (After one American hostage was killed, the hijackers released the rest—followed soon after, in an implicit quid pro quo, by Israel freeing a number of Shiite prisoners.) Asked how he would deal with terrorists in the future, Reagan promised to consult his oracle: \"After seeing the movie Rambo, I'll know what to do the next time something like this happens.\" The master of fantasy merged with the fantasy of mastery—Ronbo. Meanwhile, a pumped-up Bruce Springsteen was hailed as the Rambo of Rock. The Vietnamalais was over. America stood at attention.

Released in the Reagan administration's final year, Rambo III was necessarily anticlimactic. Vietnam behind him, Rambo was available for commando work in Afghanistan, teaming with the mujahideen to rescue a captive from the Russian occupying army. (Having fought to make the world safe for bin Laden, sending Rambo back to wipe out the Taliban would seem the least Stallone could do for us.) In September 1990, Stallone was in his kinder, gentler bespectacled phase; the star declared he would never do a Rambo movie about Iraq's occupation of Kuwait. That was minor, \"just another speed-bump in history.\" Instead, his never-realized Rambo IV would focus on \"environmental concerns.\"

How green was my beret. Reviewing Rambo: First Blood Part II, I noted that its protagonist was a symbolic reminder that the Vietnam War would never be behind us: \"The bitterness and resentment of the men who fought and lost there is a political time bomb, to be activated anytime between now and 2001\"—which then seemed to me like the end of time. I assumed that the Vietnam issue was buried with the 2004 election, in which a meretricious pair of draft-evading warmongers successfully slimed a genuine anti-war war hero. But I was wrong.

Stallone may have recently entertained a Time interviewer by quoting an obscure bit of 1968 acid rock as his source of inspiration, but it hardly seems coincidental that as part of Rambo's eve-of-release PR blitz, the star used a Fox News morning show to make a political endorsement: \"There's something about matching the character with the script,\" he explained. \"And right now, the script that's being written—and reality—is pretty brutal and pretty hard-edged, like a rough action film, and you need somebody who's been in that to deal with it\": Who else but Senator John McCain? (To complete the love fest, as well as the script, McCain has taken to using the Rocky theme as entrance music.)

Hooray for Hollywood: Brian De Palma is hardly the only old New Lefty equating Iraq with Vietnam. But Redacted is \"Vietnam: The Bummer.\" Rambo is something else. Stallone knows that if the Republicans nominate action-hero McCain, Vietnam will return—with bells on. And, back on the national agenda, the war will have to be won again. (All the more if John-bo runs against Hillary: While he was rotting in a tiger cage, she was out waving a Vietcong flag.)

As the current obsession with Reagan suggests, it's back to fantasyland! The Democrats can consider themselves lucky Arnold Schwarzenegger was born in the Austrian zone of the former Third Reich. Meanwhile, McCain rival Mike Huckabee has cast his suitably bargain-basement Reagan-era muscleman as the embodiment of homeland security: \"My plan to secure the border? Two words: Chuck Norris.\" But as McCain's been suggesting, his guy could kick that has-been's butt—and anyway, homeland security begins over there.

Stolidly slaughtering thousands to complete a dubious mission bungled by Christian do-gooders and incompetent bureaucrats, Our Rambo once again frees the captives and redeems the nation. He's not just a rerun but a great second chance, history rewritten. The answer to a Republican prayer, he's economical, too: a one-man surge.

wow, no lefty bitterness there LOLOL

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The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.

No, now THIS is a great review/summary of Rambo. From Ernies House of Whoop-ass (http://www.ehowa.com)

John Mother Fucking Rambo.

I ducked out early on Friday afternoon and caught the first showing of Sylvester Stallone's latest flick, Rambo, and I'm really glad I did. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate this movie a 14. Seriously. There is more ass kickery in the first half an hour than there are in the other three Rambo movies, combined. The first one, where he sews up his arm? Bah, go watch Narnia you fucking wimp. The second one, where he launches the explosive arrow at the guy at the waterfall? You might as well go play with puppies. The third one, where he plays a brutal game of Buzkashi? Go play with kittens. Because this fourth installment is everything it's been built up to be; and quite honestly I'm amazed it wasn't number one at the box office this past weekend.

But setting my disappointment aside, I am now going to tell you all about this fucking awesome movie. So if you plan on going to see Rambo in the next few days, you might want to skip today's post, because there's going to be spoilers up the wazzoo.

Go on, it's okay, come back tomorrow.

Go on.

...

There, now that all the fucking pussies are gone, let's get down to business. The movie sets the tone by opening as follows: The back gate of a military truck drops opens and a handful of civilians are herded out by soldiers of the Burmese military. Two of the soldiers hurl land mines into a nearby rice paddy and with a burst of gunfire, force the civilians to run through the paddy towards the land mines. The soldiers when whoop and holler, betting on which civilian will be the first to go. After a few tense seconds of these poor bastards clawing their way through the mud, an explosion accompanied by a red geyser of blood and water signals an end to the game. The soldier laugh and mow down the rest of the civilians with gunfire.

Cut to Rambo, who is also stalking something in the jungles of Burma. A snake. He and two of his comrades are hunting a cobra which they obviously catch, because there's no way a puny little snake is a match for Rambo. On the way back from their hunt, they stop the boat so Rambo can do a little bow fishing. Again, fish being no match for Rambo, Rambo hunts and kills three of them, one of which he gives to a couple of monks on a skiff. From this, we learn that the wild war dog from past movies -- John Mother Fucking Rambo -- has now found a life of peace and is just mild mannered John Rambo. We learn the snake he was hunting is used by the locals in a snake-charming show put on for tourists, and as Rambo is doing a little maintenance around the snake pens, he's approached by Michael, a Bible-thumping peace-loving pussybag (BTPLPB). The BTPLPB would like to hire Rambo to take him and his hippie friends upriver to Burma, so they can build a bonfire, hold hands, and sing Kum Ba Yah with the war refugees. Rambo tells the BTPLPB to go fuck himself. BTPLPB's female companion Sarah decides she might have better luck at convincing Rambo, and to cut through five minutes of dialog, he finally agrees. I would like to point out that the dialogue between Rambo and Sarah is the longest period of the movie without someone being killed or something blown up. From here on out it's balls to the wall.

So upriver they go, and on the way the BTPLPB is preaching his, \"We're all God's children,\" bullshit and taking careful attention to exclude Rambo from the conversation. Night time falls and they come across a Burmese military patrol boat docked in the side of the river. Knowing things would end poor for them if they are discovered, Rambo tells them all to shut the fuck up and coasts the boat past the soldier's campsite. And just when you think they've made it, the patrol boat comes roaring up with their floodlights on and pulls up alongside Rambo's beat up little river boat. Rambo tells all the hippies to look at the floor - don't look any of the soldiers in the eye or else they'll be killed. So of course, the dumb whore looks up. She's then spotted as a female and the Burmese soldier want to take her on board to be the 'center of attention for all the guys'. Rambo tries negotiating, he really does. And when that fails he even tries bribery. And when that fails, well, you know theres only one thing left in Rambo's bag of tricks. Killing. And before you can say 3:10 to Yuma, John Rambo draws a hidden pistol and pops all five of the Burmese soldiers before any of them can get off a shot. It is this point where he ceases to be John Rambo, and returns to being John Mother Fucking Rambo (JMFR).

So now all the missionaries are going ape shit and the BTPLPB makes a specific note to grandstand how it's, \"Never okay to take a human life, no matter what the circumstances.\" JMFR smacks him around a bit, but in the end the missionaries still want to continue upriver so they can be help the refugees. So JMFR dumps them off without anything else going wrong and the two parties part ways. BTPLPB and his hippie friends marching inland, and JMFR heading back, stopping to pour gasoline all over the patrol boat and its dead crew, setting off a nice explosion. It doesn't contribute to the story line at all, but what's a Rambo flick without explosions, right?

So the hippies make it to the local Burmese village, where they immediately set up shop bandaging appendages, performing dental work and of course, preaching the Bible. Then the mortar rounds start. Followed by the gunfire. Followed by the machetes. That's right, there's no rest for the wicked. Bang, bang, bang, explosion, explosion, gunfire, gunfire, machete, machete... the town is attacked by the Burmese military. Most if not all of the villagers are killed, but four of the missionaries are taken as hostages: BTPLPB, Sarah, and two other nameless redshirts. We all know what happens to Sarah - she's turned into a party girl.

Cut back to JMFR, who's in mid-dream filled with flashbacks from his first three movies...errr... adventures. He's awakened by a guy who identifies himself as the head of the ministry that the hippies came from. They're ten days overdue, he's arranged for some mercenaries to go look for them, but he needs JMFR to take them upriver and drop said mercenaries off at the same point he dropped off the hippies. JMFR agrees, but forges himself a big fucking homemade jungle machete first.

On the boat we get our first look at the mercenaries; two of which are important to the story. The first is the team's sniper, nicknamed Schoolboy, and he happens to be the youngest of the group. The other is the leader of the group, a loudmouthed British asshole named Lewis (LMBA). He actually challenges JMFR a couple of times, going so far as to even pick a fight with him, and while you half expect JMFR to smack him around like a little bitch, for some reason he doesn't. JMFR lets LMBA go on thinking he is nothing more than a local boat man. So at the drop off point JMFR pulls a long leather satchel out from his boat -- and you just fucking know what's inside -- and starts to follow the mercenaries. LMBA tells JMFR to fuck off. JMFR returns to the boat. Mercenaries head off into the jungle, led by two local rebels. Along the way they pass a big fucking 2,000lb that's been sitting there in the jungle since World War II. We'll revisit this bomb later. Anyway, the mercenaries come upon the ruins of the attacked village, and it's like the fucking apocalypse. Dead rotting bodies everywhere, burned out huts, flies up the ass. I will say this, they did a great fucking job of making the place look like the end of the world.

So as the mercenaries are looking the remains over, a Burmese military truck pulls up sending the mercenaries scattering for cover. And in a nice rhetorical hook, we see some civilians herded out from the back and some soldier start tossing land mines into the rice paddy at the foot of the burned out village. Only this time the civilians make it all the way across without anyone getting blown up, so the soldiers begin to herd them back for a second run. Meanwhile our mercenaries are trying to decide among themselves if they should intervene and give away their presence, or remain hidden and just let things play out. They decide to remain hidden, which of course will spell doom for the civilians who will be soon facing a second run through the land mine laden rice paddy. And just as one of the soldier is leveling his AK-47 to fire the burst and get the civilians running again, and enormous arrow suddenly punches its way through his neck.

That's right, JMFR is here. Twack! Twack! Twack! Twack! All the Burmese soldiers are dead. LMBA is all like, \"You blew our cover! Who the fuck are you man?\" JMFR explains that who he is, is not important but what is important, is that they rescue the hostages. LMBA tells JMFR to fuck off again, and says they're packing up their Snoopy lunchboxes and going home because they've just learned the hostages are held at a local military compound garrisoned by 100 enemy soldiers. JMFR appeals to LMBA's inner spirit and convinces him to push on with the rescue operation. And by, \"appeals to\" I mean, \"points an arrow at\" and by, \"inner spirit\" I mean, \"right eye\".

So JMFR and the mercenaries hop in the back of the truck and speed off towards the military compound. They arrive at night time and since it's pouring rain, are waved into the camp without being challenged. Schoolboy is posted up high and knocks out all the guards. Some of the other mercenaries rescue BTPLPB and another guy; the third guy having been fed to pigs. JMFR rescues Sarah, but is slow to make it back because he has to stop and tear a guy's throat out with his bare fucking hands. I'm not kidding. The other mercenaries take BTPLPB and the other guy and start heading for the boat, not waiting for JMFR and Sarah. Schoolboy chooses to stay back, and it's a good thing he does because he shoots two guards who are about to discover JMFR and raise the camp alarm. So now the good guys are heading back towards the boat, only in two separate groups. Oh, and the Burmese military commander fucks little boys. I will henceforth refer to him as Captain Kid Fucker (CKF).

Cut to daybreak and the camp is in a buzz after the night time infiltration is discovered. LMBA is leading the first group back to the boat when he steps on a land mine, shredding his lower leg. Luckily BTPLPB is a God fearing doctor and manages to save his leg while his comrades build a stretcher. They continue on for the boat, only at a slower pace. Somewhere else in the jungle, the mighty jungle, a lion sleeps tonight. Sleeping right next to JMFR, who is leading Sarah and Schoolboy back to the boat when they hear the baying of dogs the Burmese army is using to track them. Rambo tears off a piece of Sarah clothes and after tying it around his boot, tells Schoolboy to continue taking Sarah to the boat, as he's got some killing to attend to. So off they go in one direction, while JMFR heads back to lead the dog handlers on a cross country obstacle course. Now, remember that 2,000lb bomb? JMFR leads the dogs right to it. Only he was kind enough to place a Claymore mine before they got there, so when the dogs sniff around it and the handlers investigate... ka-fucking boom. Yep, that's right. JMFR hates dogs. Anyway, while the enormous fucking explosion puts a damper on things for the Burmese soldiers immediately surrpunding the bomb, it also alerts all the other Burmese soldiers in the area, including CKF.

Now back to Schoolboy and Sarah. They're almost back to the boat when Schoolboy takes a peep through his scope and sees that not only did his mercenary friends make back it back to the boat, but so did some Burmese soldiers. LMBA opens his big mouth again, only this time you're actually rooting for him. Said soldier have said mercenaries on the ground and after putting foot to ass for a few minutes, are ready to start executing them. Schoolboy is about to pop a cap in CKF, who is about to give the command to execute the mercenaries, when he notices more soldiers off in the distance. These new soldiers are manning a pickup truck mounted .50 cal machine gun, overlooking the execution. So now Schoolboy doesn't know what to do. If he shoots the soldiers about to execute his friends, the .50 will open up and kill him. If he shoots the .50 gunner, he won't be able to stop the execution. The camera pans back and forth between the two and it's apparent that left to his own devices, Schoolboy will do nothing.

And then we learn you should not forget about JMFR any more than you should forget about Dre. From the tangle of vines, JMFR appears behind the .50 gunner and at the encouragement of his homemade machete, convinces the gunner's head to exit stage right. JMFR then takes over the .50 and proceeds to Kick Ass and Chew Bubblegum. He runs out of Bubblegum very quickly. The ensuing blood orgy has been highlighted before on several of those thirty second highlights I've previously posted. Just suffice to say JMFR brings the pain. Oh, and down at the boat, BTPLPB watches a Burmese soldier point a gun at his other surviving hippie buddy and after doing nothing to stop him, the hippie gets blown away. A few seconds later, BTPLPB sees another soldier point a gun at LMBA and is about to shoot, when BTPLPB bashes the soldier's head in with a rock. The circle of life is complete. He Layeth The Smack Down.

JMFR cleans up with the .50 and as the smoke clears, sees CKF running away. And like a scene out of Friday the 13th where the victim is running for the life in the exact opposite direction of their pursuer, said pursuer steps out from behind a tree and sticks the homemade machete in their stomach. JMFR stares into CKF's eyes for a minute and then gives the machete a flick, opening up CKF's stomach like a burst Hefty bag. It's pretty cool. So covered in blood and gore, and nursing a bullet wound in his shoulder, JMFR stand atop a hill and looks down upon the Ass Kicking that he has administered. Dead Burmese soldiers are everywhere. Sarah hugs BTPLPB. Like the Hulk returning to David Banner, we see JMFR melt back into being just John Rambo.

The final scene of the movie -- and presumably of all Rambo movies -- is John walking down the road in Arizona pausing only to read a mailbox, \"R. Rambo.\" before continuing on towards his father's farmhouse. The motherfucking end. Seriously, if you haven't seen it yet, do it. And preorder the DVD now, you're going to want it.

OMFG Jack, you should write for CLIFFS NOTES! If \"Tale of Two Cities\" had been written like this, it'd have been a blast.

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Slow is Fast, Fast is Slow
Violence may not be the best option, but it IS an option

I wish I could take credit for that, but it was written by Ernie, from EHOWA. He is the best writer I have ever read. The guy is a master with words. EHOWA is one of the pages I read every single day. Check it out- http://www.ehowa.com

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