So, to start off I'll give my little review of John Rambo. I think it's called John Rambo because everything said John Rambo except for the actual movie title card which simply stated Rambo. I went to watch the flick last night with a buddy from work, Dennis, while Allison and Anya went to see Alvin and the Chipmunks. Allison said it was cute but didn't fully hold Anya's attention.

Spoilers ahead.

But anyway, Rambo. I have to say it was rather good. There was the fear of an old Stallone and all but it held up pretty good. Rambo is retired, from killing dozens of people at a time, in Thailand catching snakes for a tourist trap snake show. He's grouchy, grumpy and takes his frustrations out by making steel boat props by hand. Eventually the stupid people show up to get Rambo to do something he doesn't really want to do which history has shown leads to lots of bad guys killing innocents before Rambo goes in to kill the bad guys for killing the innocent people. So these stupid people are doctors from a church in the US and want to go into Burma to help the innocent people that are already being slaughtered by a warlord general.

By the way, by this point we were given an example of how violent this movie is by showing some of said innocents being slaughtered by said general. It is rather brutal. In a way it bothers me because I'm willing to bet people will dismiss the possibility of such things really happening in the real world because it was in this movie. Despite the fact that it appears that a bit of the beginning footage is real news footage depicting death and despair in the real world. There are places in the world that truly do suck to be a human being in and the people that dismiss this type of footage tend to be the ones that claim that somehow the US is the suckiest place on Earth. But I don't recall hearing stories of a warlord kidnapping children for his army and raping/murdering/pillaging the defenseless people to make a point in any major city in the US. Well, maybe LA.

So, these stupid people wish to go into Burma to help the poor people from this brutal warlord. At first Rambo just says no. But the pretty blond woman (Darla from Angel for the Whedon fans in attendance) convinces him to do it. On the way some pirates want to take said pretty blond for some fun (for them) in the jungle. Rambo gives them a chance to go away but they don't, so he shoots them all down in rapid succession with a headshot to finish the last living guy. Stupid people immediately freak out about not taking a life and Rambo is bad and they'll have to report this (I thought this funny, report to who exactly?) and other stupid people type stuff to say.

Rambo drops them off and they go to a nearby village. Because this is a Rambo movie the warlord general shows up, slaughters the whole village except for a few women including a few of the stupid people and makes off with the women. Very brutal and violent scene. The church's preacher shows up at Rambo's shack saying he hired some mercs and wants Rambo to take them to the same spot. Rambo makes a really big knife with his prop making skills (cue montage) and the movie continues as expected.

The mercs don't like Rambo because he's all quiet and stuff. The mercs walk off into the jungle telling Rambo he can't go. The mercs witness a potential slaughter but Rambo shows up to give a demonstration of his mad skills killing bad guys with his bow. Rambo goes on about how nobody wants to be there but this is what they do. So now he's decided to fully accept what he is, which is a mad killing machine. Now mercs are willing to listen to old Rambo and they go off to do their rescue bit. Which goes off little trouble with them basically walking into the camp and pretty much walking out with the rescued stupid people. Rambo rescues the blond personally of course.

So on the way out the bad guys start the chase because they eventually realize that all the prisoners are gone and a few guards are dead. They appear dead because one guy is missing his throat and the rest have extremely huge fifty caliber sniper rifle bullet holes in their chests. Warlord generals in Burma have tracking dogs just in case you find yourself in a similar situation. So Rambo runs off in a different direction with a claymore that he rigs to what has to be a two thousand bomb dropped in World War 2. Bad guys come along, trip the trap and BOOM! Stupid bad guys didn't know that when chasing a guy that walked into your camp at night, rescued five people, killed five or more guards undetected you just don't pick up random pieces of cloth with string tied around it when standing right next to a two thousand pound bomb!

Now starts the big battle along the shoreline as the bad guys have caught up with the mercs. Rambo shows up to start shooting a fifty caliber machine gun into the crowd mowing dudes down. I mean arms, legs and heads are flying because of the big fifty. Oh yeah, the sniper of the group is lugging around that fifty caliber sniper rifle that does similar things. Nice gun for the situation but seems a bit heavy to be carrying it while running for your life through the jungle. Anyway, lots of shooting and lots of dead guys later the battle is over. In a surprising turn of events most of the mercs actually survive which goes against action movie writing rules in that only the hero and a quirky sidekick are allowed to survive. I actually appreciated that the mercs survived because highly trained soldiers shouldn't have much trouble fighting off highly untrained grunts with some help from other highly untrained grunts.

So, surviving stupid people get to go home to tell other stupid people how stupid they were which I hope convinces other stupid people from making such stupid decisions such as going into the middle of a warzone expecting their fellow man to treat them nicely simply because they want to help. But a point of the movie was Rambo telling them they can't change anything so I'm sure more stupid people will run off to get themselves killed.

And they will get killed because Rambo finally went home. Apparently to his Dad who has got to be like 80 or 90 years old by now because Rambo was in 'Nam after all.

All in all a good movie. Not as good as the first one to me but far better than the other crappy ones they did. Well, maybe the second one was almost as good but the third one stunk. If you like highly violent action movies (unlike the guy that sat next to me, I don't even know why he was there because he was clearly uncomfortable with the content) then this is a decent movie to catch before it hits DVD in about two months. At that point just rent it.

As compared to Rocky as an ending to a franchise? Rocky was good but this was a more fitting ending with the franchise because he finally accepted what he was but then he goes home to Dad to tell him how he a proud military career of killing about a thousand or so personally. But he's home now so maybe he can stop putting his life on the line saving stupid people.