Rambo IV Review-
By Bryan Reo
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Having been slack in the attention (due to being busy and disinterested) I’ve been paying to recent movies, I have just now finally seen RAMBO IV and I have to give it two thumbs up. The movie delivered not only entertainment but information on nasty current event situations as well.
It’s hard to imagine many people sitting down and watching even a twenty minute news update about the situation in Myanmar (Burma) but with the RAMBO movie at least people will have some basic knowledge as to how awful and horrible the situation is. Perhaps it is too much to hope for but time will tell if the movie has done anything to raise awareness to a level where everyday people will get involved in some capacity.
The movie also raised the interesting issue of the use of mercenaries in situations that are tricky but where no government is willing to become even remotely involved.
However, as for the film itself, while it was quite violent, and thus clearly not for children or the squeamish, it should be noted that most of the people who died were blatantly nasty and wretched thugs who had spent most of their time on screen terrorizing peaceful citizens. Quite frankly it was hard to feel sorry for any of them and they all wound up receiving what they deserved, courtesy of none other than John Rambo (as well as the mercenaries and the Rebels).
The grand finale with the .50 caliber truck mounted machine gun was absolutely brilliant and put to shame the comparatively lame kill-scenes of Rambo 2 and 3 where he hip-fires an M60 to mow down waves of enemy soldiers or uses exploding tipped arrows to down Russian helicopter gunships. There was actually realism to it, combined with feeling and heart; it was simply a well-done scene.
The next movie I plan on actually seeing in a theatre will be Punisher II or Resident Evil IV (even though Resident Evil 4 will probably be as disappointing as the first three films I’m a diehard fan of the video game series and the book series so I’ll just suck it up and go see the film when it is released). The great majority of films over the last several years have failed to impress me if they even managed to catch my attention at all, so it was quite a welcome change to see a movie as worthwhile as Rambo IV. As far as the Rambo series goes, this is perhaps the best of the four, at any rate the series has ended on a truly high-note.
