Rambo lives in Thailand, and a church group from the United States asks him to take them upriver to Burma, where the military is committing genocide against the Karen ethnic group. Before he goes, we witness several exchanges between Rambo and members of the church group, all to the effect that if they're not bringing weapons, they're not changing anything, and they should just go home. When he finally does take them up the river, the violence starts in earnest, and it never lets up. We see the military massacring civilians and Rambo massacring the military. And in the end, "Rambo" wraps up the Rambo series a lot better than last year's "Rocky Balboa" wrapped up the Rocky series.
The story is lean and focused, short and direct, not getting distracted in useless subplots. This movie is about 90 minutes long, and that's a good thing. More films should be this short. That's part of why I liked "Vacancy" so much. "300" would have been a lot better if it were half an hour shorter. If it's short, that means the filmmakers trimmed the fat and are showing you only what is necessary to tell the story. It shows, I think, that more thought was put into the film. Instead, nowadays people can't decide what's useful and what isn't, so they put everything into the movie, and a lot of times, it ruins the experience. But I digress.
"Rambo" is not pleasant to watch, but it is good, and I think there's value in seeing it. In one notable sequence, "Rambo" shows the Burmese military committing horrific acts against the Karen people, including the lopping off of body parts and even some close-up killings of children with bayonets. Unlike the film "Hotel Rwanda," which tried to convey the horrors of genocide within the framework of a PG-13 movie (and for the most part it succeeded), "Rambo" is not so subtle and wants it in your face so you can't look past it. The explicit nature of the film is the political message, much like last year's powerful "The Devil Came on Horseback," which used mountains of photographic evidence to show the Sudanese genocide in the Darfur region. In "Rambo," the images leave an indelible impression of the horrors being committed, and -- possibly, arguably -- of the horrors that need to be committed to stop it. And the film also carries a more personal message, of finding oneself and remaining true to who you are. For Rambo, that's being a killing machine: "You either live for nothing, or you die for something." While it's completely understandable that some people would not want to see this, for those who do, it's curiously thought-provoking and it accomplishes everything it set out to do.
No comments:
Post a Comment