War Dog's New Tricks?

After having exceeded expectations in becoming as a steroid company poster boy for Rocky Balboa, we were expecting Stallone to capitalize on his miracle gains in this film but were mildly surprised. Instead, we were treated to a stockier Sly, more reminiscent of Stanley in Lords of Flatbush but just as imposing. The modern-day Rambo still communicates in grunts, groans and guttural one-liners, but maintains enough screen presence to make himself felt without diverting us from the storyline, which is the strength of this flick. Stallone as director has mastered his craft; he picked a storyline dealing with a current events issue, remaining in his element (Southeast Asia) without trying to recapture the lost ground of Vietnam. Like Rocky Balboa, he is gracefully giving place to a new generation of jungle fighters while reminding them that the war dog is still up to his old tricks.

In this one, a Christian missionary group led by Sarah Miller (Julie Benz) and her beau Michael Burnett (Paul Schulze) heads into Burma, where a military detachment under command of Major Tint (Maung Maung Khin) has targeted the Karen tribe to which the team is ministering. Sarah and company have heard stories about the pirate boats and military death squads along the river, as well as a local American war vet in the area who navigates the waters with impunity. She approaches Rambo at his ramshackle blacksmith’s shop and requests his help, but it takes a couple of return visits before he concedes. We find she is happily engaged to Michael, and again, as in Balboa, it is a hopeless situation on his part, but it doesn’t stop him from flirting. He gets a shot a strutting his stuff when they are waylaid on the river by pirates, and he blows some brains out to keep Sarah from getting abducted. When he gets back to his village and finds out her entire party got taken down by Tint, it’s Stallone to the rescue again.

The F/X is what puts this a notch above the previous Rambo flicks and even noses out Live Free and Die Hard, which blew far more money for their gimmicks. Possibly borrowing from the CGI departments of those who brought us 300 Spartans, Stallone’s editors were able to employ a strobe-like staccato technique in making the casualties in the gunfights appear as being chopped up like cordwood. It gives the action a surreal quality which enhances its brutality yet, strangely, dehumanizes the victims so that they appear more like Spielberg’s AI cyborgs getting decimated, making it somewhat easier to digest (if we can allow the term). You’ll just have to buy the DVD to see what I mean.

Stallone’s choice of causes also makes this film worthy of honorable mention. The Burmese government, a dinosaur abiding by the atavistic mentality of a North Korea, has targeted the Karen tribe in a fashion similar to Saddam Hussein and his own Kurdish tribesmen. The DVD contains a documentary clip that is indistinguishable from the atrocities depicted by Stallone in the flick. This (outside of Africa) may be one of the only places on earth where Christian nations seem unwilling to step in and stop the slaughter as they did with our fellow white Christians in Bosnia. In a day and age when corporations are banning advertisements discriminating against chimpanzees as our DNA kinsmen, we should think Stallone’s red flag should be taken with more than a grain of salt.

This is a great action flick that discusses relevant issues and makes for a great evening for mature audiences. Plus it may well be the curtain call for one of the icons of the genre. Don’t miss it.