Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here. People are seeing it all over the place now, and it looks like we’re starting to hear the same basic thing over and over, and I’m not shocked at all. Check this out:
Yes, I have also seen Rambo just like you Harry. (BTW I will have some spoilers) First off, let me say that it was fucking awesome, so fucking awesome there were many of those holy shit moments in the movie. I have to say that the first scene of the movie really sets things up though, it basically shows you to your face that this is no fucking watered down pg-13 shit. It says that if your pussy leave now, because this is fucking Rambo and Veggietales is across the hall for all of you pussies. Anyway, back to the movie. Yes, I must agree that the first part started off slow, but it was really necessary to show what pricks these fuckers were. In the beginning though, Rambo does sell snakes to make a living and these 5 good hearted people want to go and change the world for peace and all the other hippy shit. Rambo tells them no, but you know that he wants to fuck the living shit out of Sara, so he agrees and while they are traveling up the stream, they almost get captured by the mercenaries. Rambo shoots all of those fuckers and then one of the hippies, tells Rambo off by saying that he shouldn't kill, because he is taking away an innocent life or some bullshit like that. Rambo just grabs him and tells him off Rambo style, but the dude is still a fucking douche even when Rambo spares him. Anyway though, as the movie goes on the hippies get captured after Rambo warns them and the mercenaries go total fucknuts crazy on the village they were helping. They get captured and the merc's treat them like shit or one of Mike Tyson's prostitutes. The movie goes on and a Rambo gives in to helping them after a priest comes in and asks. He says they have some mercenaries of their own waiting in the boat (only 5 or 6, which is a great way to kill thousands, am i right?). By the way though, this movie finally got something right in movies, they have a redneck mercenary, but only 1 so don't get too excited. The movie goes on and everything kicks into fucking awesome mode, where limbs, heads, and everything you can imagined gets shattered to shit like mexican food to an empty stomach. The ending is just plain fucking awesome, I will not spill any details though, as there are not enough words that can describe it's awesomeness. Anyway though, the movie was great, I thought it was better then Live Free or Sell Out and become pg-13. Stallone, thank you because it is pure greatness and it's almost like Chuck Norris, in fact there should be a movie with Rambo vs. Chuck Norris. Stallone OWNS, end of story. P.S., not a plant, also, January is a really good month for movies, i might add, even though the shitty Meet The Spartans comes out, go see Rambo instead, bootleg a copy of Meet The Spartans. If you use this, call me D.Plainview16
I think the thing that people are going to respond to the most with RAMBO is the way it unapologetically spills some fucking blood. It is glorious because it doesn’t pretend to be something else. It is a bloody action film. And if that’s what you want, you may respond the way this guy did...
Hey Moriarty, Firebaum here with an awesome review for you! This is how it went down... 11:00am - I check my email at work. I get invited to a 1:30 screening of RAMBO. 11:01am - Told my boss I wasn't feeling well and needed to go home. 11:05am - Feigning sickness I shuffled out of the office, hit the sidewalk, and bolted to the theater. 1:30am - Took my seat. Lights went down. RAMBO began. Mind was blown. Let me start by saying this review may be a little biased because I am a big fan of the 'BO, so as long as Stallone was shredding fools in classic Rambo fashion, I was going to be satisfied. And I was. In my opinion this movie is the best of the series next to First Blood. It is more similar to First Blood in it's tone. I felt like Rambo 2 and 3 were more campy-action (fun as they were), but this one didn't really have any of that (No "I'm your worst nightmare" one-liners). In fact a good deal of the movie was treated with a level of seriousness that the others didn't have. For one it's a hard R. The violence in it is pretty graphic, and they don't shy away from showing how nasty these Burmese soldiers can be. During a couple sequences of the Burmese soldiers at their worst I could audibly hear audience members gasping. It was almost, dare I say it, Private Ryan levels of disturbing realism that made me wince more than a few times. But don't get me wrong, the violence was effective, and it made you reaaaaaaally want to see Rambo exact some justice. And boy, does he ever! The story is quite simple. An American church group on a goodwill mission try to enlist the help of John Rambo to take them up river into the jungles of Burma in his boat. Rambo repeatedly tells them they won't stand a chance, but they finally convince him. Of course, as you might imagine, the church group doesn't stand a chance and it is soon up to Rambo to save them. The simplicity of the plot allowed a lot of screen time for Rambo to kill people, which is what I wanted. The church group characters were interesting. The main one was Michael (played by Paul Schulze) a good hearted but stupidly naive guy who challenges Rambo for not being more active in helping their cause (to which Rambo responds "Fuck the world.") and for killing Burmese pirates while defending him and the rest of his group. Michael and the rest of the church group are presented as fools despite their good intentions. It almost seems like Stallone wanted us to dislike them and I was fine with that. Rambo doesn't want to save them because he gives a rip about them or their cause. He wants to save them because it gives him a reason to kill. Up until the bullets start flying you get the feeling that Rambo is just waiting to kill somebody. Even in the beginning when things are quiet, beneath Rambo's calm demeanor his soul is not at peace. Deep down he is restless, he is a machine that wants to prove he isn't obsolete. I feel like it mirrors Stallone himself in some ways, an action hero from an age when heroes had huge biceps and dispatched bad guys with sheer power, still trying to prove he's got it. And he does. In addition to the church group characters, Rambo teams up with some mercenaries who were fucking awesome! Well not all of them, just the main one named Lewis (played brilliantly by Graham McTavish). Lewis is played like a british soccer hooligan with an automatic weapon. You gotta love a guy who calls his enemy a "fucking lady-boy cunt". The mercenaries were like baby Rambo's and I almost wish they had more of them because they were such colorful characters. Which brings me to my one big complaint: The movie seems too short! At 90 minutes it's not terribly epic. So that's about all I can say about Rambo without giving any real plot points or spoilers away. The cinematography was cool, the music score was great (loved that they continued to use the Jerry Goldsmith score), but mostly it was good to see my old buddy John back on the screen tearing people's throats out! On a seperate note, a trailer ran before the film for a new Clive Barker movie called "Midnight Meat Train". I like Clive Barker but the guy has to come up with a title that doesn't sound like a second-rate skin flick. -Firebaum
I’m curious to see how well they sell MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN to the uninitiated. It’s one of the cornerstone stories in Clive Barker’s body of work, one of the most notorious and well-known of the BOOKS OF BLOOD. It’s not torture porn by any stretch of the imagination, but then again... what do you call the fetish imagery of HELLRAISER at this late date? That movie’s all about sex and blood and pain and horror, and the chains and the spikes and the leather... I mean, it’s not really a stretch to see that as torture play. It’s a really simple concept, and they should be able to cut a great trailer. Sorry to digress. Another RAMBO review! Now!
Fellas, I cannot thank you guys enough that on an almost serendipitous occurrence you happened to schedule the advance screening of RAMBO the same day we'd hear the news that Heath Ledger passed away. I walked in to the screening somber, and cold from the outside wait, and wasn't fully anticipating the experience like I was earlier in the day before I heard the sad news. I was in the mindset that the news was going to poison the experience, because I had been distracted all day regardless of what I was thinking about, or doing. However, this film was exactly what the doctor ordered to deal with the passing of Heath Ledger. This film is a masterpiece of fuckin' mayhem that I, nor anyone else that I can imagine would have ever dreamed of. You ever watch those serious survival films, like THE KILLING FIELDS and HOTEL RWANDA, and you see these horrible and vile human beings committing these heinous acts of violence against innocent people, and just think to yourself "someone needs to come by and rip this guy's face right off his skull....slowly"? Well, beg no more, because Sly heard you and he's going to make all your wishes and dreams of sinful vengeance and satisfaction come true. He's "gonna give you a war you won't believe." The Rambo saga picks up about 20 years after we last saw Rambo in Soviet territory siding with the Afghan rebels to rescue his old superior, Col. Troutman. Rambo now resides on the outskirts of Burma, where he's distanced from the world's longest running Civil War, but not too far that he feels uncomfortable in a completely peaceful environment. He spends his days now capturing deadly snakes to sell, bow-and-arrow fishing, and fine tuning his skills as a blacksmith. That is until his days of solitude are interrupted by a group of American volunteer workers looking to lend a hand to the impoverished people of Burma, and they need Rambo's assistance to get to the village. Eventually, Rambo is convinced to help and defies his better judgment, thanks in large part to his soft spot for women with ambition, and he helps them all get to the village. Once he leaves the Burmese military comes to wreck the parade, annihilates the village and villagers, and takes the Americans captive. Rambo's survival and combat skills are once again in dire need. The one initially surprising element of this film is Stallone's treatment of the Burmese horrors, because it is raw and completely unflinching. The comparisons earlier to films like THE KILLING FIELDS weren't hyperbole, Stallone holds back absolutely nothing in regards to the massacre material. Nobody is safe, not the women, children, nor animals and when he shows the monstrosities he makes every effort to make it seem as real, and as shocking as possible. It's the perfect kind of setup to Rambo's vindication later, and we just have to wait and see if he puts the men in the world of hurt that we feel they deserve. As the film progresses and the stakes are raised when the Americans are captured we find out that a world of hurt is precisely what Rambo has in mind. The last 30 or so minutes of the film is a pure adrenoline rush, and Rambo goes on the kind of rampage that most American audiences are not used to seeing. I'm talking mountains of bodies of guys that have been splattered, sprayed, dismembered, decapitated, dethroated, exploded, severed, and any other adjective you can come up with to describe someone dying in very unpeaceful ways. He takes the R-Rating to its absolute limits, and I'm completely shocked that it got one. He seriously grabs that letter by the throat and squeezes every ounce of allowable material that he can from it. If you felt satisfied by the hard R from 300, you really have no idea what's in store for you. If it wasn't for the heavy-hearted material shown earlier in the film of what kind of monsters the Burmese military really are then the splatterfest to come later on would've come across as 100% over the top and unnecesarily gratuitous. However, because of our own desire to see the men die horribly, Sly's approach to the violence is welcomed with open arms. This is what we wanted, whether we feel happy about it or not. This film puts on display the id of a vengeful soldier, and even the passive people in the audience may find it difficult not to at least quietly cheer as Rambo goes on a tear. This is really the perfect film to truly test the mindset of the kind of person that feels violence is never the answer, and that it solves absolutely nothing. One could sit and talk about the moral questions that lurk through the action from time to time during the movie, but quite honestly nobody is going to remember them. You've seen them in the trailer, and that's all there is. They're visibly in the distance when you recall back on the film because of how graphic the rest of the film is. This is the kind of action/war film you might've seen coming from the Paul Verhoeven in the late 80s through the 90s, but not from Sly. This is probably the first time I'd say that the director didn't make the film, the character did. John Rambo made this picture, not Sly because this level of surprise and shock could only come from the most iconically disturbed Vietnam vet that cinema has introduced us to. Thanks, The Beef
And another guy from the Alamo screening, which sounds like it was insane:
Hey Harry, GAH! here. I was at the Rambo screening at the Alamo Village and all I really have to say is: Holy fucking fuck, Rambo! While this won't be spoiler free, I'll still keep it any spoilers fairly vague. This movie was stupefying. It left me shattered and drooling in a fetal ball sucking on my thumb. At some point the helpful Alamo staff came along, gave me some water and offered to call my mother. This movie destroyed my expectations, and then destroyed me. Let me qualify this. I love "First Blood." It is a brilliant movie, but it's not an action movie. It's a monster movie, where John Rambo is the monster. Think about it. It has all the hallmarks of the classic monster movie. The small town. The inept police force that makes things worse instead of better. The expert that knows what makes the monster tick and may be the only hope in stopping it... But as much as I love the first, Rambo: First Blood Part Two and Rambo III were never anything more to me than passable rah rah boom action movies with a slightly overt political overtones. They had some good kills and some fun action sequences, but honestly... They were dragged down by a lot of stuff that was a little boring. Over all, they were far from cinematic classics and never lived up to the potential or the spirit of the first movie. And this movie reconciles that. Rambo is fucking scary. He has less than twenty lines in the entire movie. He doesn't smile, he doesn't smirk. There is no joy for John Rambo. He is cold and distant and a fucking machine when it comes to doing what needs to be done. He let go of the last shred of humanity and warmth a long time ago. The Christian group that foolishly travels into Burma is more afraid of him then the thought of a liberal in the White House Even the supposedly hard-assed mercenaries who fight along side him are afraid. Rambo has always been a killer. And in this movie he does what he's best at. Over, and over, and over. So why does he go to Burma? What is it that draws him into a hellish warzone? Well, what else? A woman. I know, I know. Save your groaning. It's not what you think. Rambo isn't looking to get laid. The woman is a Christian missionary hellbent on supplying medical aid and food and hope to the villagers being slaughtered in the prolonged civil war. I guess there's just something about the woman's indomitable hope and resolve and optimism that send a spark of recognition through Rambo, triggering a stray memory of something besides death and blood and murder. Perhaps a puppy dog? A rainbow? A lollipop? Or maybe he's just a little bit sadistic and feels that this beacon of optimism has the right to fail spectacularly. So he takes them into Burma and drops them off and they all live happily ever after. For about five minutes. Of course, once the shit seriously hits the fan, Rambo is called upon to help rescue those wayward missionaries. And maybe that little twitch he felt was his humanity coming back to him after all, because if I didn't know any better I would think he felt guilty about letting that poor, unfortunate woman and her friends actually get what they thought they wanted. So he heads back into Burma, this time with some mercenaries, to try and extract any survivors. They happen upon the base camp in the middle of the night, and they stealthily travel in the shadows, hunting for the prisoners and stalking the enemy prey. It makes for a very tense mood, and even recalls some of my favorite aspects of "First Blood." But it's not all cold stares and calculated kills from Rambo. He shoots and stabs and also blows up stuff real good. All that sneaking around leads to quite the stand-off the following day, and it easily tops anything previously seen in the franchise. By the way, I remember the outcry against the violence of Rambo III and the hyperbole spewed against it at that time, and this... this was the movie they were actually describing. This movie is violence to it's very core. And it's not just violent, it's gory as hell. It's as if Stallone was tired of Takashi Miike taking the gore crown away from the Americans and stepped up to take it back. And he does. This movie is fucking relentless in blood sprayed, and the limbs flying, and the fucking kids stabbed. It's like the D-Day scene in Saving Private Ryan times about fifty. Anyone who appreciated or found themselves drawn to or even exhilarated by that or anyone who appreciates a good on-screen kill should sprint full speed to see this movie when it opens. Yes, it's fucking harsh. Yes it's fucking bleak. But it's still a lot fun and satisfying. The really bad guys get it as good as they gave it, and at least a few of the people you cared about are left standing at the end. And hey, that's about all you can hope for when you walk into the middle of hell. I also want to add that Stallone has a very steady hand on the direction of this, and should be commended for how well it all works. It has some beautiful photography which contrasts well with the hand held action shots. The performances are solid across the board, and Burma is captured in a way that is all too believable. I even think the last scene was an appropriately perfect bookend to the beginning of "First Blood." Thanks Harry for helping to bring this to Austin early. I'm really happy I got to see this tonight. -GAH!
