Rambo - the new one

Not entirely sure why my housemate decided it would be a good idea to watch Rambo (the 2008 version) a few evenings back, but as the film got underway I had no idea quite how much material it was likely to provide for this blog.

Rambo is the story of John Rambo (known in the film mostly as 'Boatman'), a Vietnam war veteran played by Sylvester Stallone who goes into the jungle to shoot baddies, rescue helpless people and generally raise hell.  Here he goes to the Burmese jungle for some reason, and ends up joining with a bunch of other Western military types to try to rescue a bunch of hapless and wimpy charity workers.  This involves shooting, stabbing, bayoneting and blowing up as many Burmese military personnel as he can before the credits roll and anyone who's still alive can live happily ever after.  This is a Rambo film - what did you expect?

I always imagined that Rambo would be something like The A-Team in its style - this could hardly be further from the truth.  In actual fact Rambo looks a lot more like Saving Private Ryan, with its visceral depiction of violence and death.  People who get shot have their arms and limbs blown off.  People getting shot in the chest have clear holes blown clean through them.  A man who is shot at point blank range with a .50 calibre machine gun is reduced to a pile of red mush in seconds - from several camera angles.  Whereas in Saving Private Ryan these moments of horrifically bloody violence are used sparingly to underscore the terror of war, here in Rambo they're used all the time.  And I do mean all the time.  The official body count for the film is 239, which tallies in at 2.59 per minute.  That's an entire company of soldiers for fuck sake!  The majority of these deaths are shown in ludicrously gory detail.  By overdoing the realism the film loses any power it could of had.  By removing any concept of the terror of warfare and replacing it with video game cut-scene style visuals, the film undermines itself.

To be honest though I can't imagine the makers of Rambo were really thinking about making a film that puts the viewer though the psychological grinder.  Instead they wanted to make a film where Rambo shoots a Burmese militiaman in the neck with and arrow, then that militiaman falls on to a mine and explodes.  And to be fair to them, that's exactly the film they've made.  If you're looking for a popcorn film that kills 2 hours of time and shows you nearly 250 people being killed in a variety of stupid ways, then this ticks every box.  Citizen Kane it is not.