Owned!

Rocky Balboa accelerates Mason Dixon's inevitable brain damage, while a Mills Lane look-alike reaches for his genitals.

Rambo Website Up and Running

The official Rambo website is now online. I have to say this is one of the best-looking Flash websites I’ve ever seen, similar to 300’s. You get the usual movie website stuff, like the synopsis, picture galleries, trailers, wallpapers and cast & crew bios. In some of the photos Stallone looks so buff he could tear a bear in half with his bare hands. Little by little more content will be added, but what is there now is worthy of a visit. Check it out: http://movies.break.com/rambo/

Movie Review: First Blood

Starring:
Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Brian Dennehy, Chris Mulkey, David Caruso

Director:
Ted Kotcheff (Weekend at Bernie’s, Law & Order: SVU)

Synopsis:
John J. Rambo, a mentally unstable Vietnam war veteran, gets harassed by a small town police Sheriff and is forced to start a one man war with the whole town.

My Two Cents:
It’s been 25 years since First Blood was released and I watched it for the first time 2 days ago. I really wasn’t expecting much because I always thought Rambo was about brainless action and gratuitous violence at the hands of a bloodthirsty soldier, but I was wrong.

Trying to make his way in life after surviving the horrors of war is not an easy feat to accomplish, as we can see from Rambo’s depression. Once a war hero, he now drifts aimlessly around the country. He has no family and all his friends were either killed in Vietnam or died from cancer for being exposed to Agent Orange. He has no job, no direction, no purpose.

While drifting through a small town he comes across the town’s Sheriff Teasle (Brian Dennehy) who suspects Rambo is a stinky bum, or maybe even a criminal. He wants Rambo out of his town so he offers him to give him a lift but instead takes him as far away from the town as possible. Rambo waits for the car to turn around and immediately starts walking toward the town like nothing had happened. Sheriff Teasle is so pissed he decides to arrest him. He finds a large survival knife on Rambo and takes him straight to the police station to spend the night and face a judge the next morning. The police officers have a field day with Rambo, hassling, hitting, and hosing him down. Their fun ends, however, when one officer holds him from behind while another attempts to shave him with an old-school big-ass blade. This takes Rambo right back to Vietnam, where he had been captured and horribly tortures with a machete. He snaps and starts bringing down the hurt on the officers, easily and quickly beating the shit out of them, including Sheriff Teasle who had just arrived at the station. Rambo escapes the police and runs into a forest to hide. This is bad news for the Sheriff, who is now even more pissed than before and is out to hunt him down. Why bad news? Because Rambo is at home in the jungle. He sets booby traps everywhere and one by one he takes the officers down, but spares their lives.



News of the insane bum gets out fast and soon there are hundreds of National Guards and State Police officers combing the forest. At this point the Pentagon sends in Colonel Trautman, the man who trained Rambo to be the killing machine that he is, to try and make him surrender. Unfortunately, Rambo was never trained to surrender.

I don’t remember a simpler plot to a movie. It’s all about a crazy ex-soldier hiding in a forest while the police try to kill him. No plot twists, no surprises, only survival. And it’s OK, because I enjoyed every minute of it. It’s fun to see Stallone go all Snake Eater, stealing weapons from fallen police officers, hunting and killing warthogs for food, placing booby traps and hiding behind trees waiting for some poor bastard weekend warrior to walk near him and then beat the shit out of him. One of the best parts of the film is when Rambo finally breaks down in front of Trautman, telling him some of the terrible things he has seen in his life as a soldier. It’s hard not to sympathize with him.

I’ll be definitely watching the sequels and get ready for the fourth film early next year. Till then, keep your oversized knife sharp and your M60 fully loaded.

Score:

Rambo is Back! Should we Hide?

Can you believe I’ve never watched a single Rambo movie, ever? Just bits and pieces when there was nothing else on TV. As a kid I managed to watch R-rated films like Predator and Aliens, but Rambo just didn’t interest me at all. All my friends had watched it and wanted to be like Rambo, but I wanted to be like Luke Skywalker, and still do.

When I heard Stallone was making another Rambo as well as another Rocky I honestly thought it was a joke. “Is he broke?”, I thought to myself, “What’s next, Judge Dredd II?” But when I finally watched Rocky Balboa, and really liked it, I thought that perhaps old Sylvester knew what he was doing. He’s letting us know what happened to those characters 20 years since we last saw them. They’re older, worn out, but still full of heart. Now suddenly I’m all excited about the next Rambo. I hope Stallone can impress me a second time.

Stallone's Death Wish

Veteran action star Sylvester Stallone sure is keeping himself busy these days. He both starred and directed 2006’s Rocky Balboa, as well as 2008’s Rambo. Now he’s getting ready to remake Charles Bronson’s 1974 hit, Death Wish, and yes, he will direct it as well as play the main role of Paul Kersey. For those too young to remember Death Wish, it’s about an ordinary man whose life gets turned upside down when his wife is brutally murdered and his daughter raped, turning him into a merciless vigilante. I believe it was rated R. The remake should go into production next March.