Rambo Blu ray
Studio: Lions Gate Home Ent. Release Date: 05/27/2008 Run time: 93 minutes Rating: R
User Ratings and Reviews
4 Stars Extreme gore with a serious political point
I was shocked by how much I appreciated this movie. Yes, it is extremely, but not excessively gory. The blu-ray version makes the violence even more real. The point of the violence is to show what people in Burma face every day – this isn’t overblown, this is a fictional story of real everyday occurrences. The supplements in the film point out that the Burma military government is afraid of the movie and will kill or imprison for life anyone who sells the film in Burma, or will imprison anyone for 10 years who watches the film. They also point out that 1/2 of their national budget is used for weapons – and those weapons are only used against their own people. Rambo does a great job showing the West and rest of the world what innocent men, women, and children are going through in Burma.
5 Stars Excellent DVD in excellent condition.
The DVD was delivered in a timely manner as promised and in the new/excellent condition as advertised. That is all a customer asks for. Thank you.
4 Stars Excellent Addition to the Series
Despite what you may have heard, John Rambo is still very much alive. He’s battle worn, sick of the world, and “retired” in a village deep in Thailand where he catches snakes, fishes, and sleeps fitful nights. He probably would have lived out his days this way and quietly died years from now with us never hearing from him had not a group of missionaries from Colorado decided that they would go into the worst area of Burma on a humanitarian mission, or had Rambo been able to talk them out of it. But that didn’t happen…
And with that set-up, John Rambo is back. I won’t recant the plot anymore, suffice to say there is incredible action in this film, just amazing, and if you are like the rest of the population, and Rambo is your kind of American hero, you’ll follow his every move.
Sylvester Stallone gets some big props here for several reasons. Though you can pretty much guess what’s going to happen, it doesn’t matter. There are enough surprises, and each individual scene will keep you in your seat. Sly also gets credit for reminding us when he steps up, he can act pretty well. Despite at times being the killing machine you might expect, he does a very good job of the war torn Rambo, and allowing him to be a complex character. The film is also very nice looking, with terrific sound and visual effects, and Brian Tyler’s score pays good homage to the late Jerry Goldsmith.
There are a few things I had a hard time with though. For taking a step and reminding the world that the regime in Burma (Myanmar) is an oppressive dictatorship, the film may have missed out on showing it’s complexity and reality. In this film it’s simply an end of the world war zone of all war zones. There’s a fine line here, and Sly takes the stance showing the worst of the worst of Burma, in a worst case scenario. This would be more believable had the enemy not be partly faceless, and outrageously cruel. These guys are on par with the Nazis and some of the most brutal inhumane people in history. Are the Myanmar (Burmese) military that brutal? Perhaps at times they have been, but Sly doesn’t spend any time showing why, or how it got to be this screwed up. It just is. The film is also incredibly violent and brutal. If you’re not ready to see some amazingly realistic gore, you’re not going to make it through the film. However, if you can stomach it, the film is very real. War battles aren’t guys getting shot with no blood, and rolling over telling their buddies to say good-bye to mom. They are loud, harsh, terrifying, fast and bloody, and this film is as realistic as it gets in this regard, reflecting that ugliness and brutality. Get ready.
Rambo fans, or really fans of any action film should watch it. Even if you think you might like this film, you should watch it. If you can handle the brutal reality of it, you’ll find it’s an excellent addition to the series by Sly and you won’t be disappointed.
4 Stars Better than anticipated
Above par action movie. The bad guys are, as usual, really bad. The people to be saved, pure of heart. And John Rambo is pissed. Not a good thing for the bad guys. But the viewers will enjoy. A high gore content to please the video game crowd. An ending could be a sequel or did “Gran Torino” close that option.
3 Stars Not a successor
I’m still a little boggled by the reviewer who was disappointed that this movie wasn’t funny. The previous three entries in this franchise in my mind haven’t exactly been laugh riots, either.
Anyway, as an action movie, it’s pretty good. It does test my theory that a movie that is all action all the time actually gets kind of boring–the last half-hour of the film include 10 minutes of running and grunting, fifteen minutes of blowing ammo, intermixed with worried reaction shots.
The meat-pinata effects were tremendous, though, as usual, Hollywood still seems to think all blood is bright red. They perhaps overuse the effect, kind of like how Ridley Scott really had too much fun with the Arterial Bloodspray in _Kingdom of Heaven_ (which is really odd because it seems to this medievalist that they wore gorgets–armor on their necks–precisely to avoid the kind of thing Scott finds so cinematic). Still, it’s an impressive effect.
They use the new-fangled ’speed combat scenes up and jerk the camera around to make it all like, y’know, intense and stuff’ thing only rarely–in fact, so rarely that the few times they trot it out, it’s out of place.
Julie Benz delivers exactly the same kind of performance she gives as Dexter’s girlfriend Rita in the Showtime series–that is to say a woman who thinks that being a ’strong woman’ means irritating the poop out of a man until he does what she wants him to. Outside of horror movies, I have never wanted a character to die so badly. She’s dressed in ethereal, pure white, just in case you’re too dumb to remember you’re supposed to be on her side. But, I suppose Rambo fights for ideas, and not for charisma of the leading lady.
The reason I wasn’t crazy about this movie is that compared to the others, the plot was thin. Yeah, that stuff that lets the audience (and the actors) take a breather, that little valley in the rollercoaster that sets us up for the next hill? Not so much here. And what there is does keep the veneer of Freudian analysis, except, now, daddy-figure’s gone. I mean, just for a starter, at the beginning of the film, our Man Rambo is collecting *snakes*. Freudian? Naaaaaah. And all of the bad guys suffer from various sexual perversions (so we know they’re the bad guys, I suppose, in case the killing of women, children and dogs isn’t enough to clue us in), compared to sexless God of War Rambo.
If you want an action film without all that pesky plot and character development, this is a winner. If you wanted the same rich mix of story and action that the first three Rambo films had (and that they try to recapture using flashbacks which really just remind us what Stallone looks like without all the steroids), this will disappoint.
Subscriptions
