Cover of Rambo (Widescreen Edition)Rambo 4 is a good wrap-up of the John Rambo lore. It gave the character much needed humanity, about believing in something, Trivia on IMDB said that "Live for nothing, or die for something" became a battle cry for the real Karen rebels, and Stallone is quite proud to have contributed that.Premise: John Rambo is in Thailand, working the "simple life" as a snake hunter and boatman, no questions asked. One day, he got a request from a Missionary Group to take them into Burma / Myanmar, to help the Karen villages. He was successful. After he left, the village was attacked and razed government troops, with the missionaries dead or captured, and all occupants killed or fled into the jungle. The Missionary leader came to seek Rambo for help: a group of mercenaries will go back to find what happened to the missionaries, and needs his help. He agreed...
The movie is quite slow at the beginning, but there is some tension, as the boat tries to sneak into Burma, past the river patrols and the pirates. The attack sequences are brutal and thus, excellent, rivaling "Saving Private Ryan" in intensity of Omaha beach sequence. You can almost feel the mortar rounds dropping and guns firing. And it all builds up to the big fight at the end, and the conclusion.
Problem? Let's just say there's a ton of body count... 236 kills as counted on IMDB, mostly at the end. Also, some of the battle tactics makes little sense. Why hit the patrol boat with the rocket after everybody onboard is toast? It has only one flame-thrower (very short range) and one HMG any way. Once the sniper took out the HMG gunner, the boat is no threat. Also, what's with the 50-cal sniper rifle? It's in there because it looked cool, but a smaller rifle would have made much more sense. At least with the huge rifle you can pretend the body will be flung back 10 ft without a head.
Still, it's heck fun to watch if you dig this type of movie.
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