Product Description
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Twenty years after the last film in the series, John Rambo
(SYLVESTER STALLONE) has retreated to northern Thailand, where
he's running a longboat on the Salween River. On the nearby
Thai-Burma (Myanmar) border, the world's longest-running civil
war, the Burmese-Karen conflict, rages into its 60th year. But
Rambo, who lives a solitary, simple life in the ains and
jungles fishing and catching poisonous snakes to sell, has long
given up fighting, even as medics, mercenaries, rebels and peace
workers pass by on their way to the war-torn region.That all
changes when a group of human rights missionaries search out the
"American river guide" John Rambo. When Sarah (JULIE BENZ) and
Michael Bennett (PAUL SCHULZE) approach him, they explain that
since last year's trek to the refugee camps, the Burmese
has laid landmines along the road, making it too dangerous for
overland travel. They ask Rambo to guide them up the Salween and
drop them off, so they can deliver medical supplies an
From .co.uk
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If you've been wondering what ever happened to exGreen Beret
super warrior John Rambo since he singlehandedly up a
Pacific Northwest town (First Blood, 1982), returned to the
jungles of 'Nam to free U.S. POWs held long after war's end
(Rambo: First Blood Part II, 1985), and interrupted the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan long enough to blow lots of stuff up and
rescue his old commandant from the Reds (Rambo III, 1988), then
Rambo (2008) is for you. Without so much as a IV to dilute the
brand name, Rambo --which is what most of us called the second,
most iconic film in the series--may aspire to open a new era for
a pop legend. But it's a thoroughly mechanical attempt to
re-animate a franchise that, absent the anger, frustration, and
self-loathing of the post-Vietnam years, has no meaning or
purpose. For some time now Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) has been
putt-putting along the Thai-Burmese border in a longboat,
catching exotic snakes to sell. As for the 60-year civil war in
Burma between the brutal government and the Karen independence
movement, he ignores it. Enter a party of American missionaries
whose dewy blond spokeswoman (Dexter's Julie Benz) asks Rambo to
haul them upriver so that they can bring medical aid to the
insurgents. After the requisite number of monosyllabic refusals,
he does. Soon afterward the do-gooders are in a world of hurt,
and he's summoned to lead a squad of mercenaries on a rescue
mission.
As storytelling, the latest Rambo is the most bare-s of the
bunch. Rambo has little to say, so it's especially galling that
Stallone, as director and co-writer, obliges him to have
essentially the same conversation at three different points (the
final distillation: "Live for nothing or die for something"). The
Burmese army goons seem in competition to commit the most hideous
atrocity (e.g., child skull-crushing underfoot), the better to
justify the eventual, lovingly protracted spectacle of them being
eviscerated by high-powered weaponry. Although in Thailand,
the movie has mostly been photographed in brown, reducing any
particular sense of place but, perhaps, perversely increasing our
gratitude for the splashes of purple whenever hot metal tatters
. --Richard T. Jameson