Rambo 4

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JOHN RAMBO-4
“Live for nothing or die for something,” says Sylvester Stallone midway through this film. He lives by his word. Not that he has not done much, far from it, for a man who has achieved cult status across the world. Now on the wrong side of 60, he continues to play by his rules. So he still takes on guns with arrows! And comes out a winner!

Of course, he re-invents his popular avatar a wee bit, gives it a contemporary touch by talking of the wrongs in Burma. But that is mere window-dressing. At heart, and in action, he remains very much the Rambo the masses saw and first admired many summers ago. The fierce expression, the rippling muscles, the brooding persona are all there: the ruggedness of his demeanour complemented by a carefully casual attire.

This one here is a mere reiteration of a tale well and often told: the luckless are helpless too. The world has villains. And there rises one man who suffers no wrong.

It has been many summers since the last outing. Time flits by, or does it? Rambo or Stallone now lives in Thailand, where he works on a longboat on the Salween river. On the nearby Thailand-Burma border there is a long-running civil war. And can Rambo be kept out of the trouble? If you have seen any of his past forays, you won’t have to guess an answer.

The not-so-young man’s isolation ends when a group of missionaries search out the “American river guide”. It is difficult for even the relief workers to set foot on the land, the missionaries cry out. Rambo steps in, helping out the abducted, seeking out those in distress.

It is all familiar territory. Where this film loses out is in pace. It is slow, quite slow, to begin with. In fact, the first half is used largely to build up the story and Stallone gives only a couple of fleeting glimpses of his talent: untamed energy, and a man valiant and fearless, quite a throwback to the times when being a chocolate boy was not in! Also, there is a dank quality to the early reels: the film appears too dark for too long as the captives are shown in godforsaken land! And there are not many shots of the river during daytime!

The things get better in the second half with the hero getting a free run to show us his worth. There are no surprises in narration, hardly any in drama. Yet you will enjoy the latter reels better as the pace picks up, the action is high-octane. And the film comes to life. Therein lies hope for it at the box office.

Watch Stallone one more time. You loved the first time. You did not mind the skirmishes in the intervening period. Despite its drawbacks, an avid Stallone fan won’t have too much to complain here.

Rambo proves old soldiers don’t die: they make sequels: An iconic action-hero of the 1980s whose rise coincided with the waning years of the Cold War, John Rambo’s return is proof that in Hollywood, old soldiers never die — they just make sequels.

And as the decorated Vietnam veteran exploded into US cinemas on Friday amid a hail of gunfire — 26 years after making his debut in “First Blood” — no-one was more surprised than the actor who plays him, Sylvester Stallone.

Stallone, 61, revealed in an interview with AFP that he never envisaged Rambo’s character driving one of the best-known movie franchises in history, earning 600 million dollars and spawning three sequels in the process.

“When I made ‘First Blood’ in 1982 I had no idea that I’d be ringing in the New Year 26 years later with the third sequel,” Stallone said.

“I originally thought that ‘First Blood’ was a good action picture that might catch on with war veterans and some action movie fans but I had no idea that it would become a worldwide phenomenon.

“The first script I saw had come close to being made by Steve McQueen, Al Pacino, Gene Hackman and any action star of the time,” Stallone replied.

Although Rambo started out as an anguished, sensitive character tortured by the experience of Vietnam, Stallone says the latest portrayal is in keeping with the second and third sequels, where he is a muscle-bound one-man army.

“I rewrote the (First Blood) script to give the character Rambo a little humanity. Now he’s just mad at the world and wants justice,” states Stallone.

While the Rambo franchise became redundant with the end of the Cold War, Stallone says he began thinking about reviving the character as he brought another of his heros out of retirement, punchdrunk boxer Rocky Balboa in 2006’s film of the same name.

“I got the idea for ‘Rambo’ while training for ‘Rocky Balboa’,” Stallone recalled. “I figured I was getting into shape for one then why not the other. “To me both characters are average everymen in different worlds. One wears a funny hat, the other a bandana and neither of them speaks much but they both communicate well through their actions.

“What I realized after I completed ‘Rambo’ is that he and me are a lot, lot older now and they, like Rocky, are now resigned forever film-wise to a wheelchair as in ‘Did I ever tell you how I once took on a continent?’ or some other big lie old men share to entertain their friends with.”

Does Stallone have any other characters he’d like to revive?

“I’ve got a lot of characters I’d like to kill and bury from sight like Judge Dredd or ‘Judge Dreadful’ as I call the picture,” he replies, referring to the critically panned 1995 science-fiction film.

As he has got older, Stallone says he has come to better understand the harsh critical reception that several of his past films endured.

“Pretty much every character or films that critics hated of mine I can find something now to agree with them on,” he says.

“I was channel surfing recently and saw ‘Rhinestone’ so I watched it because I hadn’t seen it for a while.

“When I heard myself singing in the picture I thought ‘What was I thinking? Can’t I send Rambo over just to shut this guy up?’,” jokes Stallone, referring to the forgotten 1984 musical flop.

Even so Stallone believes that some of his films never got the recognition they deserved, most notably 1981’s “Night Hawks”, which sees him playing a New York City cop battling an international terrorist mastermind.

“The movie came out twenty years before 9/11 and no studio has made a movie about terrorism as real and scary as this picture,” Stallone said.

“That’s one character I wouldn’t mind playing again but I didn’t create it so I have no idea who owns the rights to it.”

One character and actor Stallone misses is the late Richard Crenna, who played his superior officer in the first three “Rambo” films before he died three years ago.

“Richard was a very witty, calm and easygoing man which the crew and I loved because the three prior films were physical nightmares to make.

“I miss him and I considered him a friend and someone who never got the credit he deserved for making my character appear human on screen.

“I think Sam Elliott who basically plays the same part in ‘Rambo’ has a lot of Richard’s skills.”

Stallone, who directed John Travolta in the 1983 “Saturday Night Fever” follow-up “Staying Alive”, says he now plans to devote his time to film-making.

“Acting today on screen is about trying to respond to comic book characters and big-budgeted special effects.

“I want to direct heart-warming dramas or an offbeat comedy like that John Landis movie I did ‘Oscar’. I want to bring small human stories back to Hollywood.”

So how does a broody Vietnam vet with a long-term case of post-traumatic stress disorder keep busy in the backwaters of Thailand for 20 years between Rambo III and the sequel called just plain Rambo? Judging from the appearance of Sylvester Stallone, who co-wrote, directed, and stars in the hell-with-it-all bloody fourth run of the stomping action franchise, John James Rambo at 61 has kept fit via a regular regimen of wrangling poisonous snakes, running a longboat, and keeping his head bandannas clean. Unfortunately, that quiet life is interrupted by a party of howlingly naïve Christian missionaries and medics from Colorado who request Rambo’s navigational services. The do-gooders are headed upriver to assist ethnic Karen refugees in Burma (apparently no one’s told Rambo that the country’s called Myanmar now), underdogs who have been fighting a brutal civil war with the ruling military junta for 60 years.

The fools have chosen a profoundly dangerous route, of course, as befits any war pic involving the word ”upriver.” It’s a given that Rambo will initially say no, followed by grrr. Also a given is the capture of the hapless missionaries, the arrival of a search party of colorful mercenaries, and Rambo’s mournful decision to blow all of Burma to hell to rescue the hopeless lot of them — mercenaries and missionaries alike. Baby-stabbing, decapitation, gang rape, and rivers of blood: Rambo is up to its boot tops in numbing violence.

The brutality, tough enough to take, would be intolerable if Stallone didn’t toss the movie like a cant-clearing grenade at notions of stay-the-course righteousness (not to mention at the sermonizing of more faith-based agonies staged by Mel Gibson). Rambo teaches that fighting sucks, good intentions can be futile, and coalitions of the willing are a charade: A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. Sometimes that means tying on the old bandanna to hack one’s way out of the Hollywood jungle so disorienting to aging action stars.

Enjoy!!!

~ by preeti on January 28, 2008.