Rambo review---"that's right, he forges a machete"

[underpants]

Stallone's revisited 'Rambo' a bloody mess
Blood-and-guts mercenary film has little more to offer due to bad acting and script

http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/entertainment/movies.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2008-01-26-0040.html


Unfortunately, Sylvester Stallone has seen "Saving Private Ryan."

So when people are killed in his new "Rambo," they are blown apart in D-Dayesque splashes of blood and viscera, mangled limbs flying in all directions and blood dotting the camera lens.

The whole purpose of "Rambo" is to show the killing, which is a good thing because the rest of it is fairly awful. Those who are turned on by such things will find their hearts pumping to scene after scene of swarthy foreigners being killed in a strange land that hasn't been called Burma in 19 years.


At the film's beginning, Rambo has retired to a life of snake-hunting (and apparently weightlifting) in Northern Thailand.

But first, Rambo has to talk himself into it. As he forges a machete -- that's right, he forges a machete -- he says to himself, "You know what you are. You know what you're made of. War is in your blood. When you get down to it, killing's as easy as breathing." The speech goes on a lot longer, but you get the gist. Besides, it's hard to hear it all over the giggles in the audience.

Despite everything, Stallone actually handles his jobs as actor and director well. His character is the only one on the screen to have life (with the exception of Matthew Marsden as a mercenary). And as a director, he proves consistently thoughtful and creative.

But the rest of the movie is a mess, from the overbearing music to the banal story to the leaden characters -- and at one point, even the color correction is off.