Movie Review: New — not improved — ‘Rambo’ is back

The stoic stare of John Rambo is new, not improved, and back in a theater near you.

The nihilistic Vietnam Vet was last on Screen in “Rambo III” almost two decades ago — and Sylvester Stallone has tried to keep the same look and material. The latter sort of works and the former is laughable.

Sly has altered his appearance so drastically that it’s almost hard to take him seriously. His Elvis lip snarl is now so prominent you expect Rambo to yell “Adrian” at any moment. And every time he delivers a zany one-liner (“F*#@ the world”), one can’t help but snicker. If you are a fan of the series and crave carnage (and can get past the plastic surgery nightmare) you will enjoy this pic. “Rambo” brings the blood, mud and pain.

In this chapter, Rambo’s a cobra wrangler and river guide in northern Thailand (“It’s complicated,” he says). All is peaceful and good until some missionaries ask him to take them up the river to Burma, a country immersed in the longest civil war in the world.

When Sly was prepping for the film (he co-wrote and directed) he asked around to try and find out where the most violent place in existence is — and he very may well have found it in Burma. Plundering, pilfering, raping and massacring happen in abundance everyday there. The situation is bleak, dismal and when you leave you will wish it all just happened on a soundstage and isn’t continuing on in the real world.

After escaping death on the river Rambo drops the goodwill doers off in Burma (where they have supposedly made several trips before, but don’t act that way). The madness that follows is absolutely abysmal. Meth-addicted, Burmese generals force helpless citizens to run across a field filled with land minds.

After stepping on one the people are blown to bits and it only gets worse from here on. Whoever is “lucky” enough to get across is gunned down immediately. When the army leaves the village they’ve just decimated they burn bodies and hang them.

Violent scenes include, but are not limited to: Children getting killed at point-blank range, the machine gunning of human beings which tears their torsos in half, soldiers’ heads getting blown off, and Rambo rips a bad guys’ larynx off at one point. This nitty-gritty material might cause you to have flashbacks like our protagonist often does.

After returning to his peaceful abode (this movie is so up and down you will be able to hear your own rapid breathing at times) Rambo finds out the missionaries have been captured. So, along with a quintet of mercenaries he sets out to save a damsel in distress and company.

It’s a good thing that Sly keep revisiting old material that way we can see what technology does to story lines of old. Rambo meets the video game era is a good thing for havoc wreaking scenes galore.

Never thought there’d be another Rocky, Rambo or Indiana? They just keep going and going and going. “It’s a good thing,” Martha Stewart would say. If you’re a diehard fan willing to turn a deaf ear, or eye every once in awhile.

The Details

2/4 Stars

Action/Drama/Thriller

Run time: 1 hours, 33 minutes.

Rated R for strong graphic bloody violence, sexual assaults, grisly images and language.

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz, Matthew Marsden, Graham McTavish.

Written by: Sylvester Stallone.

Directed by: Sylvester Stallone.