Sylvester Stallone went back to Burma after two decades of refusing to. The rights to John Rambo had bounced from Carolco Pictures to Miramax to Nu Image and Millennium Films, and Stallone had shown no interest in picking the character back up. What changed his mind is not in the record. What is in the record is the film he made: 92 minutes, co-written and directed by Stallone, released in the United States on January 25, 2008. It is the fourth Rambo, a sequel to Rambo III, and it is dedicated to Richard Crenna, who played Colonel Sam Trautman in the earlier films and died in 2003.
Trailer, via HD Retro Trailers.
A Snake Catcher on the Salween
Twenty years after leaving Afghanistan, John Rambo lives in Thailand. He catches snakes and runs a ferry. That is the whole of his life when the film opens, and Stallone plays it without apology. The missionary doctors from Colorado need passage up the Salween River into Burma. Michael Burnett leads them. Sarah Miller, his fiancée, is with him. They are going to a village of the Karen people to bring medical aid. Rambo says no. He says it more than once. Sarah talks him into it.
The boat is stopped by pirates who want Sarah in exchange for passage. Rambo kills them, quickly, and the missionaries see it. That is the first thing the film does right: it does not let the killing sit as heroism. It sits as a shock to the people he is carrying, and it should. He drops them at the village and leaves. On the way back he destroys the pirates’ boat, and the film cuts to flashbacks of what he did the night before.
Major Pa Tee Tint and the Saffron Revolution
The film is set during the political protests of the Saffron Revolution in Burma. Major Pa Tee Tint, an officer of the State Peace and Development Council, leads his forces through the countryside. They pillage settlements. They slaughter civilians. They take teenage boys to be drafted and hold women hostage to be raped as sex slaves. Tint’s forces raze the Karen village and kill the people in it. Sarah, Michael and other survivors are captured.
Back in Thailand, Rambo is hired to carry a group of mercenaries to the drop-off point. He offers to go further and help. Lewis, the team leader and a former SAS soldier, turns him down. Myint, a Karen rebel who knows the ground, leads the mercenaries to the village. They survey the damage. Then a squad of Tint’s soldiers returns, and the soldiers force a group of prisoners to walk a minefield for their entertainment. Rambo arrives and kills the Burmese soldiers.
What Stallone Gets Right Behind the Camera
The cast around Stallone is functional rather than memorable. Julie Benz plays Sarah, Paul Schulze plays Michael Burnett, Matthew Marsden plays School Boy, Graham McTavish plays Lewis, Rey Gallegos plays Diaz, Tim Kang plays En-Joo, Jake La Botz plays Reese, and Maung Maung Khin plays Tint. Ken Howard is also in the film. The performances are not the reason anyone watches Rambo, and Stallone does not ask them to be.
What he does ask for is pace. Ninety-two minutes is short for a war film, and Rambo uses the time. The plot is thin — a rescue, a river, a compound — and Stallone does not pretend otherwise. He builds to the mercenaries and the minefield and lets the last act run. The musical score drew praise on release, and it earns it. The action sequences are staged with a clarity that most films of this size do not bother with. Stallone directs like a man who has been in these scenes before and knows where the camera should stand.
The Violence Is the Argument
Rambo was released with mixed reviews. The praise went to Stallone’s direction and his performance, to the action, and to the score. The criticism went to the plot, to the violence, and to the politics. All three complaints are fair, and only one of them is a real problem.
The plot is thin. That is a fair hit and a small one. The politics are the harder question. The film takes the Saffron Revolution and the campaign of fear as its backdrop and does almost nothing to explain either. Burma is a setting, not a subject. The Karen people are in the film, and Myint is a character with knowledge and a role, but the film is not interested in what they are fighting for beyond the fact that they are fighting. That is a limitation, and it is worth naming.
The violence is a different matter. Rambo is graphic in a way the earlier films were not, and the graphicness is the point. A film that shows a village razed and women held as sex slaves and prisoners walked through a minefield for sport has already made a decision about what it is willing to show. The criticism that Rambo is excessively violent is true and also beside the fact. The question is whether the violence is used or displayed. Mostly, Stallone uses it.
The Tagline Does the Work
The film’s tagline is “Live for nothing, or die for something.” That is the whole character in eight words, and Rambo is smart enough to let it carry the theme rather than explain it. He has been living for nothing in Thailand, catching snakes. He goes up the river and finds something to die for, or at least something to kill for, which is the closest thing his character has ever been offered.
Stallone plays him quiet. There is no speech. There is no moment where Rambo announces what he has learned. He offers to help the mercenaries and is refused, and he goes anyway. That is the performance. It is the best thing in the film and the reason the film works at all.
Where the Film Sits in the Series
Rambo is the fourth installment, based on the character David Morrell created, and it is a better film than Rambo III. It is leaner than First Blood and it does not have that film’s patience or its interest in what happens to a man after a war. What it has is a director who knows exactly what he is making and a runtime that does not allow for indulgence.
The franchise history is worth noting for one reason. Carolco Pictures went bankrupt and the rights went to Miramax in 1997. Miramax intended a fourth film and could not get Stallone to commit. Nu Image and Millennium Films bought the rights in 2005 and green-lit the film before Rocky Balboa came out in 2006. Filming ran from January to May 2007 across Thailand, Mexico and the United States. That is a long road to a 92-minute movie, and the movie is better for having taken it. An older Stallone plays this Rambo differently than a younger one could have. The wear is the performance.
What Rambo Is Worth
Rambo is not a great film. It is a good one with a thin plot, a cast that does what it is asked and no more, and a politics it never bothers to argue. It is also 92 minutes of a director who understands exactly how much a scene needs and no more than that. The score holds. The action holds. Stallone holds, and he holds the film together.
The mixed reception on release was the right reception. The praise for the direction and the performance was earned. The criticism of the plot was earned. The criticism of the violence missed the point, which is that a film about a massacre has to show you the massacre or it is lying about what it is. Rambo does not lie about what it is.
What matters here is not whether Rambo is a good sequel. It is that Stallone came back to a character he had walked away from and made something leaner and harder than the films that came before. The minefield scene is the film in miniature: prisoners used as entertainment, soldiers watching, and one man arriving to end it. That is not subtle. It is not meant to be. It is the argument the film has been making since the boat on the Salween, and it lands.
The part worth watching is not the rescue. It is the twenty years before it, and what a man does with them. Rambo answers that in 92 minutes and does not waste a scene on the way.
KEY FACTS
– Title: Rambo (2008)
– Director: Sylvester Stallone
– Writers: Art Monterastelli, Sylvester Stallone
– Runtime: 92 minutes
– Genres: Action, Thriller, War
– US release: January 25, 2008 (Lionsgate, The Weinstein Company)
– Germany release: February 14, 2008 (Warner Bros. Pictures)
– Tagline: “Live for nothing, or die for something.”
– Audience score: 6.7/10 (4,404 votes)
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
