Rambo's Last Ride?

When I first heard that they were going to make another installment of this movie series, I honestly had my doubts as to the ability of Sylvester Stallone being able to pull it off. Even when I saw the first trailer on the internet back in September, (which showed some of the graphic violence), I still had my doubts. I missed seeing this in the theater, although a couple of friends told me that it surprised them how good is actually was. This made me intrigued, so I decided to purchase the DVD and watch it.

Now, let me say now that this is NOT a movie for anyone under the age of 16, in my opinion. Obviously, you know your kids, so you can make your own judgments, but please do so after watching this without them. Some of the imagery that is portrayed in this movie can be disturbing to kids, as well as some adults.

The movie starts out with John Rambo in Thailand, living on a riverbank, hunting snakes to sell to a local man for a sport, which isn't explained in the movie all that much. It also inter-cuts with scenes of the Burmese military invading a village, and doing the sort of thing you read about in the daily news. It is those scenes that you will find especially disturbing.

The action is set up by a christian humanitarian group trying to get medical supplies to a particular group in Burma. They want to hire Rambo to ferry them on his boat. After some convincing, he reluctantly decides to take them. After being stopped by pirates, (which Rambo deals with quickly), you see how tense the situation is between Rambo and the Christians. Once Rambo drops them off, the director tries to give you the sense that he feels for them as they go off into the jungle.

After the aid workers are captured by the evil Burmese army, a representative of the church they came from comes asking for help. He has hired mercenaries , and asks Rambo to take them. He does, and there is some tension amongst the mercs as they travel down to the drop site. Once they reach the drop site, Rambo acts as if he is going, but is told to stay, as the other mercs think he is just a "boatman".

Needless to say, he does get involved. However, Rambo wasn't the "I'm going to do it all" guy in this movie, as it was with the first two and partially in the third. This was a surprise with the movie, as I though the mercs would be wiped out. He worked with them, and to me, made it a bit more realistic in my opinion.

For an action movie, the dialogue is average. You really don't get much dialogue from Rambo movies anyway, so this, to me, was a step up.

Even though Richard Crenna passed away a few years ago, he was still in this movie in flashbacks. His voice talked over the flashbacks, and you see him in the flashbacks as well. During these flashbacks (scenes from the previous movies), you even see scene cut from the first movie, where Rambo shoots himself.

All said, the storyline was well done. It is very current, since Burma has been in the news quite a bit as of late. To be honest, I don't think much about the story should have changed.

The supporting actors gave a decent performance. Julie Benz was the only actor, I thought, gave a good performance supporting Sylvester Stallone on the "good guy" side. Paul Schultze, who played Micheal Burnett, was decent, although I felt a little more could have been done with him in the movie before the end. The leader of the Burmese army unit, Maung Maung Khin, had a great presence in this movie. You really hated him in this movie. He made a great bad guy. I hope he can play more roles like this.

This seemed to be a good timed movie release, since Burma has been in the news quite a bit, even around the time this movie came out. In Rambo III, it was Afghanistan, and shortly before the movie was released, the then-USSR pulled out of there.

As it was said in a couple of other reviews on here, Sylvester Stallone can still be an action hero. It did it here with some help, but it didn't take away from him. This is a great action movie, which has been, in my opinion, missing as of late.