jobloffski
Posts: 1837
Joined: 30/9/2005
From: elsewhere
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I credit this film with more depth than most seem to, perhaps because I heard and saw interviews in which Sly laid bare his motivations for what he was doing before I finally got round to seeing it:
To make it worth making another Rambo film, he needed a 'tone' that was different to the others. He went with approaching the film as if it were directed by Rambo himself, expressing a jaded view of the world and everything he had ever been trained to stand for. Notably the carnage at the end deliberately harks back to the 'big speech' at the end of the first film: every time he closes his eyes he sees his buddies being torn to shreds. So at the end of Rambo, when he's 'blowing away the mothers with the big gun' Rambo is, in effect, seeing his own personal nightmare over and over again, bodies being torn to shreds, and he's the one pulling the trigger. Rambo believes himself to be a monster, and that's the weight he carries with him every day.
That put a hell of a spin on watching the world weariness of Rambo in the film.
Additionally, the opening brutality of the film gets across the apparent 'need' for something/somebody like Rambo to do something to stop such horrific treatment of human beings that never seems to end.
Rambo, for me, isn't about the gung-ho aspects, it's an effective apology for the weaker parts 2 and 3, filtered through a plot that is simplistic on the surface, but motivated by a desire to ask 'what the hell kind of a world is this where we can let things like this go on and do nothing?'.
And Sly was refreshingly honest in his admittance that he chose a scenario that refers to a conflict that has been going on for many decades and wasn't (unfortunately) likely to be wrongfooted by the sudden end of the situation referred to.
Also, unlike 2 and 3, Rambo has the implied critique of America that the first had: this is what the country turns people into in order to do the dirty work, with an additional implied critcism of the country for doing nothing about injustice, evil, etc where there isn't a dollar in it for uncle sam.
The Rambo of Rambo is a malfunctioning machine that is good for only one thing and no longer capable of opening himself to any kind of warm feelings from others that would make him a human being again. But he does something to help someone in a fucked up crazy world and lets in just enough light to allow him to finally go home again.
Pretentious wank or am I hoping what Sly's words did for me will allow someone out there to experience a far more melancholy, worthwhile film than 'rambo tools up and kills da motherfuckers'?
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Yes, dreamers dream and doers do. But if dreamers DON'T dream, doers don't have anything TO do. Everything that is only here because people exist, only exists because someone thought of it., or in other words, dreamed it.
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RE: This ain't the Rambo I know and love! - 
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