Rambo

In the latest Rambo movie, John Rambo has taken up residence in Thailand. He lives a pretty quiet existence, capturing snakes for a tourist trap, until some missionaries convince him to take them up the river into war torn Burma (which I thought was now known as Myanmar). As you may have guessed, things don't play out as they had imagined for the well meaning but naive missionaries and those that aren't killed are taken prisoner by the army. The church pastor then hires John Rambo to ferry some mercenaries up the river to extract them. That is where the plot ends and the action begins.

I know that plot isn't the primary attraction of a good action flick, but something a little more plausible might have been nice. Sure, naive missionaries are believable, but a teary eyed pastor hiring mercenaries to retrieve them? Come on. And some story after the first 25 or 30 minutes wouldn't have hurt anything.

I don't know if I was supposed to be laughing as much as I was, but the violence was bordering on Looney Tunes proportions. I never saw a movie with so many exploding heads, bodies cut in half by gunfire, severed limbs, and general body parts flying about. I don't know, maybe high caliber weapons really can cause that much carnage, but it came across as comically over the top to me.

These things considered, this is really what I expected out of a Rambo movie after the previous iterations. If you enjoyed those installments, chances are you'll enjoy this one as well. If, like a lot of viewers, you like over the top violence and a paper thin plot, then this is the film for you. I found it to be ok, but it could have been better. 60 year old Sly Stallone did an admirable job of not just getting himself in shape for this (even if it was aided by HGH) and pulled off the action scenes perfectly. If you're up for a good action flick, this is worth watching if you don't get your expectations too high.