rambo

The name's Rambo. John Rambo.

I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about there. It makes no sense as a joke and offers absolutely no kind of commentary on the film itself.

So yeah, Rambo. Which, in complete disregard for the film's title is actually the fourth Rambo film.

But it's such a long distant sequel, it's kinda understandable why they didn't give it a more sequel arific name: Fourth Blood or something. But that isn't to say they've ignored the time gap.

Indeed, a key part of the film is how long Rambo has spent 'in the wilderness' as it were. If it had just been "here's more Rambo" it wouldn't have worked. But what they've done here means it does kinda work.

Which isn't to say the film entirely works, just that it's a good start. So what else about the film works?

A big success is the length. With credits it's only about 1hr25. This means that the pacing is really good - nothing drags here and also, nothing feels gratuitous. Well, okay, we'll get to the violence later, but I mean none of the scenes feel like they were unnecessary - it cuts right to the heart of the story.

Another success is Rambo himself - he feels real and understandable. It follows on logically from where he was in the previous films and makes sense.

And, perhaps surprisingly, one of the biggest successes is the depiction of a mercenary team in the film. Normally in this sort of film they would prove to be useless. Perhaps one of them would be good, but the rest would end up getting killed instantly and stupidly or need to be rescued by Rambo.

Well, even though one of those things does sort of happen, it happens in a way that you can believe and subsequently it shows the mercs doing a good job. These guys are just about as effectively as Rambo himself, which is really nice to see.

It's also pretty successful at portraying the absolute mess that is Burma. The story is fictional, but according to what the people they interview say and the research that was done it's not wholly unrealistic.

The last truly successful thing is the extras - a commentary from Sly himself and a veritable bucket load of extras make this a worthwhile disk from that standpoint.

A sort of successful thing is the way the violence is portrayed. It's... well, it works. On the commentary and interviews they keep talking about it being realistic. I'm not 100% sure on that myself.

For example, legs blown off by mortar rounds and grenades and people being shredded by 50 cal rounds I can believe. Similar levels of damage being inflicted by a handgun I'm not so sure about.

Also, it comes awfully close to being too much. The final sequence is quiet long and the violence and gore is at such a level it almost becomes too much. As pointed out in the extras, if it hadn't had a rousing, movie-style soundtrack behind it you'd have been vomiting in your popcorn. I mean, honestly it's worse than most horror movies.

But then there's the thing - that's sort of the point. War is horrible.

The main thing that didn't work so well for me was the bad guys. They were quite two dimensional bad guys - there was no suggestion of them being anything other than simply 'bad'. Also, the missionaries seemed a bit on the hyper-naive side to me. Especially since one of them claimed to have been into Burma 5 times before.

But overall those didn't really detract too much from the film itself, which I enjoyed. But I think you need a strong constitution to watch it!