John Rambo

Stallone has thrown together some early footage from "John Rambo" to use as an enticement for distributors. He has also made the footage available on the internet to get some feedback from the fans. It's not a formal trailer (and features way more gore than even a red band trailer would allow), but I felt like reviewing it anyway.

Remember the characters in "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle" who tormented Harold and Kumar throughout the film? Y'know, those white guys in the SUV who were always doing some dumbass stunt while yelling "Extreme!!!" Remember those guys? Someday far from now, after "John Rambo" has left theaters and arrived on DVD, I suspect that if you were to place the DVD in your player and selected the Stallone commentary, it would consist entirely of Stallone screaming "Extreme!!!!"

The early footage reeks of desperation. I really liked "Rocky Balboa." What made that film work was how understated it was. It really wasn't about Rocky's triumphant return, but more about an aging star who felt alone and lost in the world where his reputation lived on, but his glory had long ago faded. "John Rambo," on the other hand, is about making sure the bad guys get blow'd up real good.

I hate using this word, but I can't think of a better adjective for the plot: retarded. John Rambo lives in some reclusive village and I guess rents out boats. I group of do-gooders gets the inane idea that they are going to rent a boat from Rambo, travel into war-torn Burma without any weapons, and convince everyone to live in peace. Rambo tells them they're idiots, so they get another boat and travel onward. Low and behold, they end up captured and tortured. Rambo then goes to rescue them because he feels guilty. Then bad guys die in lots of terrible ways.

Here are my immediate issues:

1. Anyone who goes into any country that has been warring within itself for decades/centuries/millenniums and thinks that they are honestly going to make any kind of positive difference deserves exactly what they get. You don't walk up to grizzly bear and calmly explain to it why it shouldn't eat you. Instead, you stay the fuck away from the bear. If peace could be easily achieved, it would have happened by now. I hate to bring this up, but history has already shown us time and time again that the only way to end a fascist military regime is pretty much to violently revolt. And even then it's still a long shot. Thus, any character in a movie that embraces optimism in a situation like this immediately loses my sympathy and caring.

2. The gore. Sweet jesus.

Let's get this out of the way: I love gore. When used correctly, gore makes me giggle uncontrollably. I always have been, and always will be, a horror fan. So gore is nothing new to me, and I certainly do not find it appalling.....unless it's used incorrectly. "John Rambo" is not using it correctly. Rambo decapitates a guy with a machete, fires a .50 caliber machine gun at a guy 2 feet away and pretty much liquefies him, makes various guys' heads explode, and rips out a guy's throat with his bare hands. This would be all well and good, but it all reeks of Stallone screaming "Extreme!!!" at the top of his lungs. The gore exists just to be gory. Horror can get away with that, because Pointless Gore is pretty much its own sub-genre. But so far none of the "Rambo" series have used gore to this degree, which makes its use in "John Rambo" just a mechanism to try to shock viewers into ignoring the retarded plot. It's overcompensation, plain and simple.

After his long absence, "Rocky Balboa" reminded us that Stallone is capable of making good movies, but "John Rambo" will most likely remind us why no one really missed him when he was gone.