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R A M B O 4
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e-me (bmf@bigmoviefreak.com)
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Creative property of W.L. Kwa.
A completely personal and non-profit endeavor.
blog me
Creative property of W.L. Kwa.
A completely personal and non-profit endeavor.
The devil wears bandana
It has been twenty years since the last Rambo movie, and John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone, duh!)
has been living in the tranquil outback of Thailand, renting boats and catching snakes, though
not fully in peace. He is still haunted by his traumatic experiences in war, which has darkened his
outlook of the world and rendered him uncaring. Here to question his humanity are a group of
American missionaries trying to get into Myanmar (they call it Burma in the movie) in order to
bring a little hope to the war-ravaged people there. “You can’t change what is,�
Rambo snarls, but they go ahead with their plan anyway. Before you can say “stupid white
people,� they are quickly captured by genocidal Burmese troops. Is Rambo just going to sit
around all day taking crap from the snake charmer? Hell no! Not when the quote of the day is: live
for nothing, or die for something!
Next time when Stallone says he's going to make a badass action movie, you better take him
seriously. The movie is so violent and scary I was still shaking hours after, and I only saw the
censored version. Why they even bother cutting anything, I will never know. The whole movie was
already so intense, what's another airborne limb or head?
I like how Rambo 4 was clever enough not to copy Saving Private Ryan, which every military-
themed movie nowadays seems to be doing, even those made in Japan and Korea. People
thought SPR was violent enough, but I read somewhere that the old World War 2 vets said that
the real Omaha beach landing was ten times worse than depicted. Stallone must have thought, â
€œhmm, let's try making it times ten.â€� Thus, in his new Rambo movie, flesh does not stand a
chance against flying hot lead. I didn't know machine guns could rip chunks of meat off a human
body, but maybe the guns nowadays have become more powerful. If Bruce Lee was still alive
today, I think it wouldn’t be wrong to officially call him obsolete. Give a man a gun and he's
Bruce Lee times a hundred thousand, something the junta in Myanmar obviously understands
well.
But all these are naught without the most essential component of all – the character of Rambo
himself. Nowadays, you see a lot of wannabes looking like a Backstreet Boy, but trying to be
tough by saying things like f*** you or f*** off, but always coming off not in the least bit
threatening. But hearing it come out of the mouth of John Rambo, holy crap, that's scary man.
This guy looks like he could rip your lungs out just by staring at you. Maybe it was the big cinema
screen amplifying all the badassness. Or that he sometimes resemble Friday the 13th’s
boogeyman Jason Voorhees, with his now stockier, lumbering physique and custom-made
machete terrorising the Burmese woods. I never felt this level of raw danger in Rambo even in
any of the earlier movies.
Though Stallone may have gotten the action and character portions right, he and screenwriter Art
Monterastelli barely managed to squeeze out a script of passable quality. The dialogues were
rather clunky if not pedestrian, held together by occasional outbursts of catchy one-liners. The
story is very similar to Rambo 2’s, though their angle is now on Myanmar and the atrocities
committed there, showing graphic real-life footages of said atrocities and reenacting village-scale
massacres. Violence… bad. But later on, Rambo unleashes hell on the bad guys with a big
f***ing gun (which I’m ashamed to say, got me pumping my fists in the air), so violence…
good? I’m sure Stallone was trying to say something by having two people of opposite beliefs
just plain looking at each other over a sea of corpses at the end, but I’m not catching it.
Perhaps the answer may come in another sequel or something.
Also, I didn’t buy the fact that the pretty blonde avoided mass desecration even after being
imprisoned more than a week in a camp surrounded by horny Burmese troops. Maybe they cut
that part out, because seeing a white woman violated is just too much to bear. But showing the
brutal rapes and killings of Burmese women and children (though just reenactments) are A-ok?
At least the last scene was perfect. More Rambo in the future please, before he starts using his
knife as a walking stick. - BMF
For the record:
Rambo 1 = First Blood
Rambo 2 = Rambo: First Blood Part 2
Rambo 3 = Rambo 3
Rambo 4 = Rambo / Rambo 4 / Rambo 4: John Rambo
Body count (in brackets): Part 1 (1), Part 2 (69), Part 3 (132), Part 4 (236)
Directed by Sylvester Stallone (Rocky Balboa, Rocky 4) and screenplay also by Stallone and Art Monterastelli
(Buried Alive, The Hunted). Stars Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz, Matthew Marsden, Graham McTavish, Reynaldo
Gallegos, Jake La Botz, Tim Kang, Maung Maung Khin, and Paul Schulze. Based on the character created by
David Morrell.
It has been twenty years since the last Rambo movie, and John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone, duh!)
has been living in the tranquil outback of Thailand, renting boats and catching snakes, though
not fully in peace. He is still haunted by his traumatic experiences in war, which has darkened his
outlook of the world and rendered him uncaring. Here to question his humanity are a group of
American missionaries trying to get into Myanmar (they call it Burma in the movie) in order to
bring a little hope to the war-ravaged people there. “You can’t change what is,�
Rambo snarls, but they go ahead with their plan anyway. Before you can say “stupid white
people,� they are quickly captured by genocidal Burmese troops. Is Rambo just going to sit
around all day taking crap from the snake charmer? Hell no! Not when the quote of the day is: live
for nothing, or die for something!
Next time when Stallone says he's going to make a badass action movie, you better take him
seriously. The movie is so violent and scary I was still shaking hours after, and I only saw the
censored version. Why they even bother cutting anything, I will never know. The whole movie was
already so intense, what's another airborne limb or head?
I like how Rambo 4 was clever enough not to copy Saving Private Ryan, which every military-
themed movie nowadays seems to be doing, even those made in Japan and Korea. People
thought SPR was violent enough, but I read somewhere that the old World War 2 vets said that
the real Omaha beach landing was ten times worse than depicted. Stallone must have thought, â
€œhmm, let's try making it times ten.â€� Thus, in his new Rambo movie, flesh does not stand a
chance against flying hot lead. I didn't know machine guns could rip chunks of meat off a human
body, but maybe the guns nowadays have become more powerful. If Bruce Lee was still alive
today, I think it wouldn’t be wrong to officially call him obsolete. Give a man a gun and he's
Bruce Lee times a hundred thousand, something the junta in Myanmar obviously understands
well.
But all these are naught without the most essential component of all – the character of Rambo
himself. Nowadays, you see a lot of wannabes looking like a Backstreet Boy, but trying to be
tough by saying things like f*** you or f*** off, but always coming off not in the least bit
threatening. But hearing it come out of the mouth of John Rambo, holy crap, that's scary man.
This guy looks like he could rip your lungs out just by staring at you. Maybe it was the big cinema
screen amplifying all the badassness. Or that he sometimes resemble Friday the 13th’s
boogeyman Jason Voorhees, with his now stockier, lumbering physique and custom-made
machete terrorising the Burmese woods. I never felt this level of raw danger in Rambo even in
any of the earlier movies.
Though Stallone may have gotten the action and character portions right, he and screenwriter Art
Monterastelli barely managed to squeeze out a script of passable quality. The dialogues were
rather clunky if not pedestrian, held together by occasional outbursts of catchy one-liners. The
story is very similar to Rambo 2’s, though their angle is now on Myanmar and the atrocities
committed there, showing graphic real-life footages of said atrocities and reenacting village-scale
massacres. Violence… bad. But later on, Rambo unleashes hell on the bad guys with a big
f***ing gun (which I’m ashamed to say, got me pumping my fists in the air), so violence…
good? I’m sure Stallone was trying to say something by having two people of opposite beliefs
just plain looking at each other over a sea of corpses at the end, but I’m not catching it.
Perhaps the answer may come in another sequel or something.
Also, I didn’t buy the fact that the pretty blonde avoided mass desecration even after being
imprisoned more than a week in a camp surrounded by horny Burmese troops. Maybe they cut
that part out, because seeing a white woman violated is just too much to bear. But showing the
brutal rapes and killings of Burmese women and children (though just reenactments) are A-ok?
At least the last scene was perfect. More Rambo in the future please, before he starts using his
knife as a walking stick. - BMF
For the record:
Rambo 1 = First Blood
Rambo 2 = Rambo: First Blood Part 2
Rambo 3 = Rambo 3
Rambo 4 = Rambo / Rambo 4 / Rambo 4: John Rambo
Body count (in brackets): Part 1 (1), Part 2 (69), Part 3 (132), Part 4 (236)
Directed by Sylvester Stallone (Rocky Balboa, Rocky 4) and screenplay also by Stallone and Art Monterastelli
(Buried Alive, The Hunted). Stars Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz, Matthew Marsden, Graham McTavish, Reynaldo
Gallegos, Jake La Botz, Tim Kang, Maung Maung Khin, and Paul Schulze. Based on the character created by
David Morrell.
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