The fourth Rambo, and one assumes the last, is not horrible. It is crafted pretty simply and runs to a little over 80 minutes. Rambo is living a peaceful life on the river in Thailand. Missionaries ask to be taken by boat into Burma. After initially refusing, and insisting that words will never change anything, Rambo takes them. Missionaries are captured and imprisoned by brutal Burmese army, and Rambo takes a group of mercenaries back to retrieve them. Mayhem ensues.
The term “pornographic†is overused in reference to gunplay, but here it is accurate. This iteration is far, far more bloody than the earlier movies and glories in the carnage produced by large caliber weapons. The camera lovingly captures the spray of body parts; bullets never just penetrate: they blow off limbs and reduce human beings to mere splatter.
The politics is fairly muted. The debate is between Sarah, a missionary, who is convinced that violence solves nothing and that trying to help others is worthwhile, and Rambo who sees an endless cycle of flighting, of killing as coming to us as easily “as breathing†and a world in which words change nothing. The best scene is actually deleted, but it has Rambo talk about wars ordered by higher ups, fought by the grunts, with everyone in the middle getting killed. The message, to the extent that there is one, is unclear. On the one hand, it requires the violence of Rambo to save the day as the words of the bible cannot moderate the brutality of the Burmese soldiers. It is no spoiler to note that a missionary is moved to violence against the oppressors. On the other hand, as Sarah and Rambo survey the carnage at the end of the movie, both appear stunned at the results of the fighting and the utter futility of it all. It leads Rambo to contemplate going home.
The politics of the Rambo movies is not my politics, but it is politics, and it successfully tapped into something over the years. The first one remains the best: the story of an unappreciated Vietnam vet driven to violence by a small town sheriff in the Pacific Northwest. Sure, the storyline of vets spat upon by a nation that did not care is largely mythology, but it captured elements of a war that brutalized the soldiers that fought it (to say nothing of the Vietnamese) and which everyone wanted to forget. The second was the most political, recycling the myth that the war in Vietnam could have been won but for cowardly politicians and bureaucrats (“do we get to win this time?â€), and the third was just plain silly (Rambo on horseback playing the venerable Afghan game of buzkashi). The politics of the fourth movie is easily the most nuanced, even if it remain under the surface. It is interesting that three of the four deleted scenes involve discussion of motives, but they were deemed dispensable. Through all the movies, Stallone’s depiction of John Rambo has – at least for me – partially redeemed the movies: barely verbal, almost expressionless, slow to anger, a machine fashioned by the army then tossed away (Bourne?). The history is wrong. The politics is wrong. The conclusions are wrong. But the mixed messages of conflicting codes (duty, honor, friendship, protection), of training killers and then not knowing what to do with them, remains superior to the countless imitators (Missing in Action, Call of Duty).
Nice reading. You almost make me want to see this… and I agree with your sharp reading of the character and of the first two films. (I never got any energy up to see the third.)
Have you ever seen Rolling Thunder? It’s a Paul Schrader script, a Vietnam-vet revenge film which predates First Blood by some time, but it always struck me as a confused, more explicitly political predecessor. There’s something about the Rambo films that always struck me as more calculated, and thus I liked them a bit less–but a calculated if confused exploitation of post-Vietnam sensibilities may actually contribute to, rather than detract from, your smart reading of the films’ politics.
did anyone stitch up their own wounds in movies before rambo?
I want to say yes, but a quick search for evidence reveals no priors.
I haven’t seen ‘Rolling Thunder’ but I will now, if only because IMDB lists the following as “plot keywords”: Stabbed In The Groin | Shell Shock | Grindhouse | Stabbed In The Hand | Exploitation
Never underestimate the power of the Terminator.
Rambo’s dad speaks.
first blood predates the terminator–it’s just not listed on that wikipedia entry. that’s the one in which rambo stitches up his own arm.
I think I’ve seen self-surgery in only three movies: First Blood, No Country for Old Men and Sicko.
De Niro operates on himself in Ronin, or guides a doctor to do it; same thing, sort of, happens in Master and Commander. I found a forum where they also listed The Fugitive (less graphic) and Castaway (bad tooth). The crazed Nazi baddie in Pan’s Labyrinth does himself a little stitching–facial, no less (eat it, Rambo!). Evil Dead II, Ash cuts his own hand off.
In searching around I found reference to a contest run by David Edelstein at New York mag, which asked for readers’ favorite moments of self-surgery. But I never found a follow-up with winners. Didn’t happen?
Ronin doesn’t count. But I guess that’s splitting hairs. Like pointing out the difference between built-in ashtrays and wall-mount ashtrays.
does splitting hairs count as self-surgery?
We do agree that Ronin is a good movie though right? I’ve come across it from time to time and fall right in with it. I’ve mean to rent it on DVD and watch the whole thing, but never have.
It’s a shame that DeNiro died shortly after he finished his work on it. It seems like he was set to really start doing good work again, and I’m sure he would have continued on with a string of powerful films where he didn’t try to do stupid voiceover in cartoons or self-parodying “comedies” or whatever piece of shit script someone put in front of him as long as the check cleared.
Nope, Not Bobby DeNiro. He’d never throw away a great career with crap moves like that. Well, lIke I said, it’s a shame he died.
True. DeNiro has done some real shit since ‘Ronin’, a movie I admire immensely, and not just for the car chases. A host of fine actors put in great little performances. I thought we had a thread on Frankenheimer movies, but this is all I can find: http://www.highlyirrelevant.com/movies/2007/08/03/the-bourne-ultimatum/#comments (comments 4 & 11).
De Niro is apparently involved in some real estate controversy. In addition to making bad movies lately, he is creating a hotel in NYC where rooms start at $625/night. just what NYC needs, another overpriced hotel, you dumb shit.