Burma and Stallone Revisited

I was putting a couple of movie reviews into the proper folder just now, and I stumbled upon my old review of Rambo.

With what's been going on in Burma the past week, I wonder if perhaps Stallone was on to something. Here's what I had to say then:

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2008 - RAMBO - REVIEW

Sly Stallone returns as John Rambo, in a movie that is bound to make movie reviewers puke and Far East movie fans cheer for more.

That's the way it goes with action pictures. I've worked with and befriended a lot of Filipinos and Indonesians, and they all adore two things: karaoke, and movies about men with guns. After America's pussification in the 1970's, action movies have had their biggest draw from international audiences. Since these audiences aren't American, they don't find it shameful to watch an American blow things up all in the name of fun.

I don't know why Stallone turned to another Rambo flick. Perhaps he's going through a mid-life crisis and saying good-bye to some old memories. First there was Rocky Balboa, to which even the critics gave grudging respect. But Stallone went a bridge too far this time, and they're slamming Rambo.

I'm not.

When are critics going to lighten up? They hand garbage movies Oscar nods (Atonement, No Country For Old Men), and talk about them in breathless whispers. Then they turn around and crucify a 90 minute action movie for being a 90 minute action movie.

Exactly what do people expect from a movie that has a poster showing Stallone wielding a homemade machete?

Here's what you get with Rambo: he's living in Burma as a snake wrangler. To the north, the Burmese army is killing civilians with impunity. A missionary group shows up, and they talk Rambo into taking them north. Rambo tells them several times to go home, but of course they don't listen. So guess what happens? That's right, the missionaries are captured and Stallone goes north to kill everyone he can get his hands (or bow, or machete, or machinegun) on.

But here's the kicker: I actually think Stallone put some thought into this one. Go ahead and laugh, maybe you're right. But tell me, is Rambo wrong when he says that the missionaries can't change anything? That this is the way some of the more horrible parts of the world operate?

Stallone wrote and directed the picture, and he had some guts making it. Though everyone thinks genocide and murderous regimes are evil (Rwanda, Darfur, for that matter Burma), not too many films are talking about it. Burmese monks are being shot and killed in the streets as I write this, and women are being hacked to death in Africa every other day. But Hollywood has nothing to say about it.

I may be crazy, but I think Stallone might have slipped one under the radar with this movie. Yes, it's a dumb action flick, but it has more to say about the violence and horrible evil going on in this world than any film has said since Hotel Rwanda.

Perhaps dumb action pictures are what it takes. "Important" films only talk about Western injustice (as was the main thrust of Hotel Rwanda, no matter who actually spilled the blood). To make a film about injustice in Africa or Asia you run a very great risk of being called a racist or a warmonger. Stallone walks this line with gusto, and I found myself admiring him for it.

In the end, Stallone avoids the racist/warmonger tags by being Stallone (no one takes him seriously, anyway), and hiding his views under a sequel. If Mel Gibson or Spielberg made a film with this subject matter, the fallout would be huge. When Stallone does it, it's "Ah, what do you expect?"

I think Stallone's vision of the world is very dark indeed. You do not write and direct a movie such as this without one. It is not by accident that one of the lead, peaceful missionaries in the film finds himself faced with an ancient dilemma (kill or be killed) and decides to bash someone's head in with a rock. And then is horrified that Rambo's early prophesy came true: this is what the world is, depending where on the planet you happen to find yourself.

Am I making too much of all this? Probably. But if the critics and the Academy are allowed to make a big deal out of a piece of crap like Atonement, then I'm allowed to wax eloquently about Rambo.

The reality of politics and war in the modern world is rendered very well here. The killing for killing's sake, and the absolutely brutal regime in Burma. Stallone is not far off the mark with his one-dimensional evil characters. As a rule, evil people in life are one-dimensional. They kill people, they plunder their land, and they kill more people. Until, in this case, Rambo shows up with lines like, "If you're pushed hard enough, killing's as easy as breathing."

The special effects in this movie are the best gunshot effects I have seen in any movie, ever. Pekinpah would have loved this flick. Sam started the whole "bullet going right through the guy" trick, and it hasn't changed much since. Stallone just did. It is probably the first and only movie that will show you what a large caliber weapon does to a person: it doesn't put a hole in them. It blows them to pieces.

That might draw your ire, but my hat is off to Stallone. He decided to go over old ground, but he did it with some new tricks, and he ended the movie after 93 minutes, before you had time to be over the whole thing.