Rambo (2008) (review)

During the 1980s, the cinematic character John Rambo achieved iconic status in American popular culture by performing superhuman feats of strength, courage, and willpower to overcome situations of extreme peril and a diverse array of foes. In his first crusade, First Blood (1982), Rambo established himself as the archetypal scorned Vietnam veteran fighting against an uncaring public that had committed the unfathomable sin of turning its back on its own soldiers. In Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) he helped exorcise the nation's guilt over the Vietnam War by prevailing over communist forces that appeared every bit as evil, depraved, and worthy of extermination as the most strident Cold Warriors could ever have feared. To complete the original trilogy, in Rambo III (1988) Rambo reaffirmed America's opposition to communist expansion by fighting Russian invaders alongside Afghanistan's Mujahedeen forces.

Twenty years later, at the beginning of 2008, the human-growth-hormone infused lead actor (and now writer, director, and producer) of the series, Sylvester Stallone, returned with a fourth installment. In this outing, simply titled Rambo, the eponymous hero's isolated brooding existence is interrupted when a group of Colorado missionaries ask him to transport them up the Salween River to deliver medical supplies and "prayer books" to members of Burma's Karen tribes. Despite his initial reluctance he is convinced by Sarah (played by Juile Benz) to take them. When the missionaries are kidnapped, a pastor affiliated with the group enlists Rambo to lead a team of heavily-armed mercenaries to locate them.

The missionaries' captors and stock bad guys in this film are Burmese government soldiers. Throughout the film, the soldiers commit a litany of senseless violence depicted in some of the most graphic and sickening images ever put on screen. They force civilians to run across a mine-filled paddy, and those who do not explode in a hail of blood and water are slaughtered by gunfire. The soldiers then attack the village where the missionaries are giving aid and proceed to blow civilians to pieces with mortar fire, cut them down with machine guns, and hack off their limbs with machetes. Far more disturbing images follow as a young boy is shot at close range, another is thrown into a burning building, and yet another has his chest pierced slowly by a soldier's bayonet as the boy's head is held down in the mud. For Rambo and his cohorts, the only prescription for combating such unremitting evil is ever-increasing violence. Rambo shoots an arrow through the head of one soldier, rips out the throat of another, wipes out dozens with an unexploded World War II bomb, pulverizes scores more bodies with heavy machine gun fire, and finally disembowels the lead villain in the climactic battle.

The first three Rambo films were very much a product of the political/cultural milieu of the 1980s. In promoting the films, Stallone frequently professed his support for Ronald Reagan's efforts at resurrecting America's exceptionalism. Rambo's Nietzschean efforts in combating America's real and imagined demons provided a visual fillip to Reagan's assertions that courage and willpower backed up by action could restore the national pride that a series of emasculating events had undermined during the 1970s. There appears to be a similarly strong ideological reason for Stallone's resurrection of the Rambo character in 2008.

In promotional interviews for the 2008 film, Stallone claimed a genuine concern for the plight of the Karen ethnic minority in Burma, but the film notably downplays their story. No historical background is offered beyond a few opening newsreels of government repression and brief statements that the "poor, Christian" Karen farmers are being persecuted. No information is given on whom the Karen are or why they are suffering. No Karen character is ever given the opportunity explain their situation in the film; they appear as either guides or military reinforcements for their western redeemers. Rather than providing a depiction of human-rights' abuses, the plotline serves as little more than a construct for...