Rambo

Isn't it odd? Stallone wanted to call his first Rocky film "Rocky Balboa" but had to shorten the title because the studio was concerned about a limited audience, and he wanted to call his first Rambo film "Rambo" but had to lengthen it to "Rambo: First Blood" because the studio was worried that the title was too ambiguous.

I saw an interview with Stallone about this film where he said that at his age he has to approach every project with the thought in mind that if this is his last film, how does he want to be remembered. So with the final Rambo film, he wanted to show the real horror of war. With the previous films in the Rambo legacy, the violence was sometimes so violent that it bordered on black comedy. There were times (and I'm thinking of a particular scene with a waterfall and an exploding arrow here), where I expected there to be a paid of comedy legs standing after the explosion. There is a sort of homage to that in this film, but it's done not for comedy or just to shock, but merely to show that the human body is not best equipped to deal with the sudden and catastrophic loss of it's own head.

This film is gritty, bloody and in places fairly disturbing, and it is made all the more unpleasant for being very very true to life. The Burmese government was very unhappy with the way their country was portrayed in this film, particularly their army as a group of barbaric drug dealers engaged in mass genocide. To which I always thought that the best response from the film-makers would have been: "But you are...."

The action scenes are very bloody and gory. Let's put it this way. This film really works hard for its 18 certificate. There's been a lot of criticism about the level of violence in this movie, but in all honesty it's about par with films like Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers. I think most critics are harsh on this because they have this view that historic films about the second world war are important and have something to say about noble sacrifice, whereas films about modern conflict do not. Which is a ridiculous position to take, since it implies that films about the deaths of soldiers sixty years ago are more important than films about people dying today. Whether Stallone intended it or not*, this film brings home the message that horrible things are happening to people all over the world right now, and if his intention was to show that war is not heroic and noble, but bloody and unpleasant then he's succeeded by a country mile. His point seems to be; there's no such thing as nobility in war.

The film is both written and directed by Stallone, and he's done a good job on both fronts.

Score: C+/B- Kind of teeters on the edge there. But then, it's a Rambo film, so you'll already know if you'll like it.

OQ: You're not changin' anything...

Although banned in Myanmar (formally Burma) by the military government, bootlegs of the movie are a hot item. Burmese Freedom Fighters have even adopted dialogue from the movie (most notably "Live for nothing, or die for something") as rallying points and battle cries. "That, to me," said Sylvester Stallone, "is one of the proudest moments I've ever had in film."

Has a kill count of 236, the most for any Rambo film, which averages 2.59 killings per minute.

*And I think he did.