"Rambo" (2008) - Movie Review

Growing up seeing “First Blood”, “Rambo – II” and “Rambo – III”, you can tell that I am one among the affected kid who thought war was fun and a film without any action sequences are not worth watching. Confessing that sounds bad than having that feeling. The point is that now I look “First Blood” as an original film with character development and the following franchises as the action entertainer, the reason we all watch the Bond and Bourne series. In “Rambo” we are often confused on whether we are watching a film trying to make a point or a blind action thriller.

Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) lives in Thailand, catching snakes and riding the boat for living. With Burma in the turmoil of violence, missionaries consisting Michael (Paul Schulze) and Sarah (Julie Benz) wants to go inside the villages of Burma for humanitarian mission. Rambo denies then obviously gets convinced, they go, get caught, prison then saving etc. Blood splatters and body parts fly as flock of birds.

The drill is known and it is pure kinetic energy as for any action movies, but taking the violence up and off the notch hangs on a big dilemma on to viewing it for which genre. Stallone is of course built up and made his career out of Rambo and Rocky (which I have not seen at all). He still is in the game, no doubt with the silent rage across his face, he is menacing as always as in the previous installments. The disturbing part of the film is the set up and a remote or may be even a living truth of the incidents.

It would have been fair and responsible enough to show the characters far end in the belief as of Rambo and the missionaries. The human psychology to defend and react would be the choice of the story development per se. It does seem out of place to discuss such topics for an action thriller franchise. The film has scenes of it which surface now and then which in my opinion could have been a concept to delve. In a situation wherein Rambo acts on to save the horror appears right but how much a situation lies in a human rage? If this gets answered there would be a strict regiment of unambiguous judgment in the law or practicing existence.

Recently, I have been watching the TV series “Dexter” which takes a sociopath been trained to target the “evil” doers and thereby continue his sanity of survival along his quench to kill. It is disturbing, riveting, entertaining and sometimes shocking to be even watching with convincing emotions. That is a series which shifts the line of violence, defense and punishment as to the character. Rambo could have been handled like that thereby we could have either got a character developed and a man who lost faith in the living world dealing through calamity and strong survival among the dangers. Or totally disregard the concept of that as the two previous installments did and get on with the action with lot less of blood and flesh. Instead, a film combining tragic reality horror and pose it as an action entertainment is rather contradictory.

If not for gory violence and insane killing spree, “Rambo” could have been one another mindless action flick which is a proper unemotional draining of our dark side into an appreciable entertaining outlet. It appears as Stallone had a doubt on this content of what he has portrayed in second and third parts. This doubt and the studio demand along with fan expectation have proven to give a muddled feature film not falling in any of the category and offers guilt and blood.