In Thailand, ex-Green Beret John James Rambo joins a group of mercenaries to venture into war-torn neighboring Myanmar to rescue a group of Christian aid workers who have been kidnapped by a ruthless local infantry unit.
07 Mar Rambo (2008)
Arrows
I suppose it makes economic sense to design a film this way. It has one scene only: the shootout at the end. This is what the target audience comes to see. Everything else is setup and justification. The Asians are baddy bad bad. The mercenaries are only in need of a disciplined superior. The missionaries are a useless bunch. Women are there only to be saved, even in the case when there is no reward.
So the only way to comment on such a film is to judge it on its own terms: does that final shootout do the job?
It is a mess. How could this be? We have a relatively experienced filmmaker, a whole lot of experience making essentially the same film over and over and a sufficient budget.
It doesn’t take a whole lot to simply copy others in setting up the flow of the battle, the dance around the battlefield and the choreography of death. But the craft here is no different than a western from the 40’s where bad guys do acrobatics as they fall from buildings. A big disappointment cinematically, surely nothing to justify the other offences.
Posted in 2010
Ted’s Evaluation — 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.
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