Archive for the ‘rambo’ tag
Rambo (2008)
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.
After watching Rocky Balboa, I had great expectations about a new Rambo movie. Not that I’m a fan of the series, but what Sylvester Stallone did to the Rocky series was really amazing, in the sense that it wasn’t a boxing movie; it was something bigger than that. And now you have the story about this soldier, which in the first movie ends crying in his colonel shoulder saying that all he wanted was a plate of food. For those who don’t know, the first movie of the series was highly acclaimed by real solders, ’cause it shown a problem in the US at the time.
The second and third movies were more action movies than telling the story behind soldiers. But, then again, so were the other Rocky movies (more about boxing than the boxer), so I was hoping Sly would do the same with this series.
Too bad, I was wrong.
Although it bases itself in the conflict in Burma, the movie never really touches the people involved in it. All you have is killing and blood and gore. There is no conflicting personalities: the bad guys are bad guys, the good guys are good guys with family and all. Plain, simply, black & white and completely wrong.
Take a look at the bad guy: he is bad. He tells his soldiers to go to villages and take the kids to be his new soldiers. He does not rape women; he sodomizes little boys. His soldiers? They rape women and play games like “walk in the mined placed” with hostages. They are bad, really really bad. But the movie never really touches the fact of why they are bad. Do they hate those people? Are the sadists? The big bad guy is bad because he wants more power or does he have a vision of the unified nation (a la the “bad guy” in “Hero“, no nothing. They are bad, that’s what you need to know.
Also, the good guys are like simply good. Ok, they are troubled, but one fought in some special forces thingy and the other is trying to understand who he is and such (which he simply accept without any struggle or anything.)
Simply put, John Rambo is a movie about war, not the fighters.
