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Ready, Vet, Go

Sylvester Stallone is feeling nostalgic these days. Last year, he revisited "Rocky", the series that made him a star, giving his beloved pugilist a surprisingly fitting bookend with "Rocky Balboa". Now, he tackles the next character with which he is most identified: that bastion of Reagan-era righteousness, Rambo. (Like "Balboa", this film was originally titled "John Rambo" but was inexplicably pared down to last name only). But is there a place for this shoot-first-ask-questions-never character in a post-9/11, soon-to-be-post-George-W world?

Lest we forget, the Rambo saga started back in 1982. Based on a David Morrell novel, "First Blood" was a downright small and, yes I'll say it, effective film - a meditation on what would now surely be labeled post-traumatic stress disorder. John Rambo was a killing machine, yes, but he didn't do much killing in that film (well, not til the end anyway). He was actually a tragic character; a vet with no place in the world he helped to defend. In the sequels, Rambo became less character than caricature. And his dialogue, the like film's titles ("Rambo: First Blood Part II", "Rambo III", "Rambo") became increasingly simplistic, eventually degenerating into Mr. Stallone's now-signature mumble.

Like the previous sequels, the latest "Rambo" finds our hero living a life of solitude - this time in Thailand, catching and selling poisonous snakes (apparently there's a market for them). It seems Rambo wants nothing more than to be left alone. However, if that's the case, I'd recommend not living just down-river from Burma, home of the world's longest-running civil war. Really, John, you have to know it's only a matter of time before a band of woefully naïve missionaries guilts you into taking them upstream, never to be heard from again, prompting you to lead a mission to get them back. I mean, really, it's a miracle it doesn't happen every day.

And that about sums up the script, written by Mr. Stallone and Art Monterastelli, to this installment of the increasingly gory series. This time around, the comely young Sarah (Julie Benz from "Dexter") catches John's eye (she gives him a necklace - you know he's a sucker for those things). In a laughably stilted exchange in the middle of a torrential downpour, she tries to convince him that people can make a difference. John replies, "go home". (More queasy audience members may want to take this advice to heart.)

When "Rambo" finally erupts in a Wagnerian orgy of bullets, blood and shredded body parts, it's clear that Mr. Stallone (who directed) has a far greater weapon in his arsenal than anything Rambo wields: a special effects budget. The Rambo movies always pushed the envelope of bloody killings, but this "Rambo" amps it up to such an alarming degree that I started to realize that this character is a mirror image of Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. He's a silent, unstoppable, remorseless killer. Okay, maybe Mr. Stallone lets a bit of remorse show through, but that doesn't stop him from stepping behind that enormous machine gun and letting 'er rip.

But it's hard to fault the film for delivering on its promise. I suppose audiences would have felt let down if Rambo hadn't, oh I don't know, leveled the entire Burmese army. So, is this Mr. Stallone's idea of updating Rambo for the 21st century? Perhaps not. Or perhaps, as Rambo is fond of saying in the film, "nothing ever changes". Strangely, Mr. Stallone's strafing run down memory lane had me longing for the good old days.