Fear the wrath of 'Rambo': Stallone massacres at 61

By Jon McDonald

"Rambo" is awesome. Not in the '80s sense of the word, but in the traditional fear-the-wrath-of-God way.

Instead of watching it, you might as well just ask your local projectionist to shine it directly into your mouth. It is delicious, a visceral action treat infused with steroids, bullets and explosives that sticks to the roots of the franchise.

Clay-faced Sylvester Stallone, the greatest American actor of all time, reprises his role as ultimate badass, John Rambo, tortured by memories of Vietnam. "Rambo" is the fourth film in the series, following "First Blood," "Rambo: First Blood Part II," and "Rambo III."

If this naming sequence doesn't make sense, maybe "Rambo" isn't for you. John Rambo isn't a fan of "sense." He prefers to run in screaming with a knife, to stand in a hail of bullets he knows can't hit him before blowing everyone away.

Even at 61, Sly Stallone still pulls off the muscled, mulleted action hero. You won't see Rambo jump off waterfalls or climb up cliffs, but he's great at running through rain-soaked jungles and disemboweling enemy soldiers with a knife as big as your head.

As for plot, nothing much has changed since the 1980s. Some whiny missionaries get in trouble while helping the Karen minority in eastern Burma; Rambo has to go save them and kill everyone else.

They add in some junk about the human rights violations, but who cares? It's really just an excuse for Rambo to vaporize faces. He jumps the political red tape and machine guns his way into our hearts.

At the center of the film is Rambo's relationship with the idealistic missionary Sarah, played by Julie Benz.

The two have philosophical discussions about helping the oppressed, except Stallone wrote the script, so you can imagine the complexity. Each of the monosyllabic exchanges ends in him saying, "Go home," and walking off.

In the action movie tradition, "Rambo" keeps the story simple with cookie-cutter characters. The missionaries cry about everything, and the cartoon bad guys from the unscrupulous Burmese army are more sadistic than those in torture snuff films like "Saw" and "Hostel."

The first half of the film is all about what assholes they are and climaxes with an over-the-top scene of a village being destroyed -- people shot, arms chopped off, babies thrown in fires, that kind of thing.

With all the discussions, the news clips in the intro and the poignant pictures of often-ignored violence, you may think you're watching another of George Clooney's invitations for foreign intervention.

Then, 20 minutes in, Rambo dons the bandana and the gravelly voice starts shooting everyone, destroying all their shit and spitting badass one-liners on their steaming corpses. The body count in "Rambo" rests at 236, including Rambo's 83 kills, and is higher than in any of the previous films.

People don't just fall down and die in "Rambo." They erupt in geysers of blood, limbs and organs flying everywhere. It's terrific, but a little much if you're not used to violent cinema.

You can make fun of Stallone's writing, but his directing is hard-boiled and exciting with just the right amount of explosions and shaky-cam shots in the climactic ending.

I was a little disappointed with Rambo himself. There are only a handful of knife and bow kills, and no explosive-tipped arrows. He doesn't do much screaming while killing people, and he never takes his shirt off (for reference, over half his kills in "Rambo III" were executed shirtless).

Violent action is the attraction of "Rambo," but what's the lesson?

Clearly Bibles, food and mediation aren't going to work against the ruthless villains of Burma. As Rambo says, if you aren't bringing in guns, "you're not changin' anything."

Because really, who better to show us when fighting is necessary than the deranged apologist product of the Vietnam War?

Bottom line: 9 knives out of 10. Watch this if you like the bloody action of the originals and people who say, "When you're pushed, killing's as easy as breathing."

Contact Jon McDonald at (408) 551-1918 or jmcdonald@scu.edu.