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Tuesday, 27 January 2009

Rambo (DVD)

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Darla from Angel, Chappelle from 24 and a whole load of Burmese people dying violently.

Rated: 18.

Story: A group of American missionaries sneak into Burma to bring aid to those being mistreated by the military government. They get captured. Luckily, the taciturn bloke with the big muscles they picked as their boatman has something of a history of mounting single-handed rescues.

Lots and lots of people who can't speak English die...

Comments: I was fourteen when the last Rambo film was released, so I was hugely aware of it but never actually got to see the movie. Having watched this, however, I'm not exactly going to be rushing to find out what I missed. The plot is thin, the dialogue is dreadful and there's vast amounts of gore for the sake of it.

Most of the film is merely a justification for the extended carnage in the final scenes. The Burmese military is portrayed as simply evil, with every soldier deserving to be splattered to a fine red mist by automatic fire. Peaceful attempts to ease the situation are obliterated; controlled aggression fails. Only a homicidal pensioner on steroids can get the job done.

There's no denying that Burma can be a pretty horrible place to be. I'm not entirely comfortable that the answer is to send in Sylvester Stallone with a very big gun, though. Mixing a dumb action film with real world suffering produces a movie that's just unpleasant to watch.

Conclusion: Let's hope this isn't the future of edutainment.

Explosions: Not that many (unless you count people being vaporised by a hail of bullets...)
Stallone's performance: Surprisingly solid.
Stallone's muscles: Surprisingly large.
Stallone's top speed: Surprisingly fast.
Stallone's age: Just plain surprising.

Rating: 2/5.

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