John Rambo (*½)

Directed by: Sylvester Stallone
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz, Paul Schulze
Seen: April 20th 2008

*½ Out of ****

In Thailand, John Rambo joins a group of mercenaries to venture into war-torn Burma and rescue a group of Christian aid workers who were kidnapped by the ruthless local infantry unit. This is the verbatim copy of the plot of the film on IMDb.com.

What it does not say is that this film is not simply violent, but brutal, as is evidenced by the mincing, yes mincing, of an enemy soldier, among other things. And the Christians? As a Christian myself, I believe that going into a war-torn area to help people and continue the good work has its merits, but returning to an incredibly dangerous area after being rescued by mercenaries because you’ve been kidnapped, with members of your team murdered? That’s stupid. No need to try and make a martyr out of yourself, if it happens in the front line it’s ok, but don’t go looking for it.

I never saw the older Rambo films, and after hearing that this film is not much better, nor much worse than the average Rambo film, I’m not going to go looking for them. The bad guys are so cut-and-paste evil that you know their intent the second they appear on screen, and the good guy is only good because he kills the bad guys. In one memorable (though not necessarily in a good way) scene, Rambo kills an entire horde of bad guys, with his bow & arrows, after his fellow-mercenaries have been murdered. The old guy outlasts the professionals? Maybe only in real life, but in this universe Rambo is Superman; this film would have us believe. I'm not convinced…