Genre: Action/Adventure, Thriller and Sequel
Running Time: 93 min.
Release Date: January 25th, 2008
MPAA Rating: R for strong graphic bloody violence, sexual assaults, grisly images and language.
Directed By: Sylvester Stallone
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz, James Brolin, Paul Schulze, Matthew Marsden
SCORE = 8/10
Twenty years after Rambo III and only 2 years after Rocky 6, Sylvester Stallone returns to reprise a seminal 80’s action film role as John Rambo, a Vietnam veteran who has trouble reestablishing himself back into regular life. In an attempt to distance himself from normalcy, he holes up in various remote locations and gets by with his expert knowledge in survival. In Rambo, he is driven to the anarchical land of Burma, where a 60 year old civil war keeps the villagers in constant fear. But as one-man armies usually demonstrate, Rambo is most assuredly not a man to be messed with.
The fourth installment in the famous soldier-of-fortune series finds John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) in northern Thailand as a boat captain disenchanted with the world, and seemingly far removed from humanity. When a group of human rights activists convinces the weary commando to transport them upriver into war-torn Burma, and are captured shortly after their arrival in a local village, Rambo must lead a team of maniacal mercenaries on a dangerous rescue mission into a hellish war camp where death may be the easy way out.
The portrayal of violence in films is often used to demonstrate a specific point, such as comedic excessiveness, realism, political seriousness, a demand for bloodthirstiness, or even to show a highly stylized sense of art. In Rambo, gratuitous violence for the sake of encouraging cheers from a blood-frenzied crowd is perhaps the only reason for such brutally graphic and realistic bloodshed, but it is undeniably thrilling. Where Rambo III featured a stick-fight introduction in which Rambo squares off against a skilled martial artist and the two exchange dozens of blows with wooden bludgeons, Rambo IV doesn’t showcase any bloodless, cartoon violence — instead it attempts to show every dismemberment and evisceration with as much attention to gory detail as possible. Here, carnage is not Popeye-fun — it is stomach-churning. Art it is not, but for unabashed gut-wrenching excitement, it positively takes the cake.
The introduction of a helping hand for John Rambo is something fresh, even though in the previous films he is never completely alone. Here, in the bloodied battlefields of Burma, a group of hired mercenaries introduces camaraderie and military aid for the military juggernaut. Each carries a unique personality, much like the colonial marines in Aliens, one with an over-the-top penchant for cursing, one with schoolboy charm and decency, one with unflinching heroism and another plagued with constant doubt. Each character is likeable in a singular despicable ruffian way, and their interactions with Rambo help to develop his typical one-dimensional character beyond that of the previous films. The young woman, Sarah (Julie Benz) who convinces John to help in the first place, is an initial driving force, and later the brutality against the villagers fuels Rambo to “live for nothing, or die for something.”
If ultra-bloody violence is your cup of tea, then there’s certainly plenty to drink up with Stallone’s nonstop thrill-ride Rambo. A simple premise reminiscent of parts 2 and 3 sets up a rescue and final confrontation as brutal as any committed to celluloid. The explosive final firefight unleashes nearly twenty minutes of pure, unrelenting carnage that simultaneously pushes the boundaries of action and bloodletting.
As John states early on, “when you’re pushed, killing’s as easy as breathing,” and Rambo certainly doesn’t shy away from the fatalities or the questionable need to evince the atrocities of war. With machinegun battles that leave little more than bloody human pulp, claymore explosions that wipe out the jungle in nuclear mushroom cloud fashion, grenades that dismember villagers with gushing red barrages, machete disembowelment, and decapitations galore, Rambo is not for the squeamish, and most definitely for those who want to see heads roll and the body count reach unspeakable proportions.
– MoviePulse
Indiana Jim says
Yes.
Oh, bloody hell yes.
Moriarte says
The Big Bad Film Review
Alternate Title:
Rambo-4 arms
Ram-Bore
This film had such a weak story line it could only be strung out for an hour and a quarter. It basically concerns a group of christian missionaries being held hostage in Burma, and Rambo, along with a group of mercenaries, being contracted by a Pastor to free them.
Rambo 4 is in stark contrast to the other Rambos where he muscle posed his way to self glory. In this film, however, he must have been too self conscious of his love handles and sausage veins that the central focus of Rambo, and his character as a whole for that matter, was his forearms.
The Burmese soldiers were portrayed as verminous killing scum who feed live people to pigs, and Sly even makes further propaganda swipes at Burmese generals by portraying the one in this movie as a raper of young boys.
The killing is so gratuitous and lustful, you wonder what kind of sick, sado-masterbatory audience could enjoy this snuff movie. Rambo manages to effortlessly kill everybody in every imaginable way, and would have encountered more resistance had the Burmese army been replaced by a bunch of grannies armed with knitting needles and balls of wool. And where the hell he manages to find , in the middle of the jungle, some kind of huge, thermo-nuclear device to detonate at short notice is any one’s guess.
This abomination of a movie further insult by trying to add believability to this sado-wet dream, by allowing Rambo to get a slight nick from a bullet to his shoulder in the last minutes of the film, as he’s mopping up the final remaining Burmese ‘skittle’ soldiers.
It was a pity Rambo’s Kernel is no longer alive as he was the real star of the Rambo franchise and provided the only hint of class and proper acting.
Anyone claiming this was just a bit of fun should watch again the actual footage of the suffering of the Burmese people shown at the beginning of this film, appreciate how Sly has tried to glorify himself at their expense, and then should proceed straight to the doctors and have their brains checked out for advanced syphilis.