Rambo, violence?

Ashmo

Ashmo

Half-way Through My Half-life
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So I watched the uncensored version of Rambo IV recently. Let's just say I was a bit appalled.

Maybe it's because I only saw the other three films on TV and thus any explicit violence may have been cut down to a minimum, but has Rambo always been this violent?

Don't get me wrong, Rambo slaughtering the evil forces, that's just fucking cool. It's what the films are all about (well, II and III are): him being taunted and then rocking hard.

But wtf was this? Not only did he absolutely fail to rock -- he didn't get the girl, he let religious nutjobs ridicule him and then even had the nerve to just stand in line with the merchs like a dog waiting for scraps asking them if he could tag along?

What I found appaling, though, was not just the wussiness -- Rocky Balboa had enough of that to get me used to seeing Sly being pathetic -- but the slaughter of INNOCENT CIVILIANS.

Not just once, mind you. Most of the film seems to be about innocent civilians -- including women, pets and children -- being slaughtered in the most brutal fashion, just to get the point accross: war is hell and the Burmese are evil assholes.

As if the REAL LIFE footage in the intro hadn't been enough to establish that the Burmese army is a bunch of sadist assholes, we're bemused with a sequence showing soldiers betting on minefield runners the first thing into the film -- and that's just the first violent slaughter of civilians in a long chain.

Not only are there many such scenes, but some of them are just too damn long. I don't need to see how every single inhabitant is massacred, shot to death, bayonetted, exploded and macheted to understand that they blew up the settlement for good.

When I want to watch a Rambo flick, I want to see Rambo rock and kill lots of bad guys. I don't want to see the bad guys rock and kill lots of unarmed, helpless, innocent civilians.

And what is the justification of this? The film tries to be more "cerebral" and get across that war is violent and the Burmese government has been massacring innocents for years.

Good idea if you're making Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List or Apocalypse Now, but Rambo never was about depth and public service announcements -- it's about a white-hat lone wolf shell-shocked Captain America type war hero serving his own calibre of justice to the enemies of the Free World (i.e. the USA). It never tried to be intelligent and it shouldn't try to be now. Not with Sly Stallone as the lead actor.

Note that I do enjoy Splatstick flicks (Braindead ftw) and 1980s-style action films (Schwarzenegger's Commando was just brilliant). I never opted in to the fucking Exploitation genre (Cannibal Holocaust anyone? Still regret having watched that one) and didn't expect to find it here in a blockbuster movie, 30 years after the decade that fad died in.

Enough about me -- did anybody actually enjoy this retro-Exploitation-era gorefest? If so, wtf is wrong with you?
 
Reasons to like this movie:
.50 Calibre Sniper Rifle
.50 Calibre Machine Gun

Don't you go gay on me now, Ashmo. That movie was a bloodbath and it was awesome.
 
Rambo rocked. Plain and simple.

Due to the US media's portrayal of war, people seem to forget that horrible shit happens to regular people when there is combat going on.

Each time you see one of your F15's or F16's dropping bombs on Baghdad, do you think that it was only the Republican Guard getting smoked? Hardly.

Or, when the Americans firebombed Dresden near the end of WWII, nearly 120,000 CIVILIANS were killed.

It's the nature of war.

Rambo kicked ass, plain and simple.
 
rcorporon said:
Or, when the Americans firebombed Dresden near the end of WWII, nearly 120,000 CIVILIANS were killed.
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Allies firebombed dresden, when the allied firebombomed dresden. Mostly british and american as far as I understand.
 
horst said:
it is sylvester stalin's last rambo movie. show some respect, man!
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No, no it isn't.

So I watched the uncensored version of Rambo IV recently. Let's just say I was a bit appalled.

Maybe it's because I only saw the other three films on TV and thus any explicit violence may have been cut down to a minimum, but has Rambo always been this violent?
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Rambo III was pretty fucking gory, I'd say. Rambo just had a very realistic portrayal of violence and I think it was filmed in a really gritty and intense way which only helped to amplify that realism.

But wtf was this? Not only did he absolutely fail to rock -- he didn't get the girl, he let religious nutjobs ridicule him and then even had the nerve to just stand in line with the merchs like a dog waiting for scraps asking them if he could tag along?
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This is why I like Rambo as much as First Blood, and why most people consider First Blood Part Two and Rambo III the inferior films of the franchise. The Rambo character is not about "punishing evil" and "rocking hard." He's a warrior, yeah, but he's desperately trying to find his place in the world. Colonel Trautman says (and it's echoed in Rambo) that he needs to come "full circle" - that's the essence of the character. If you've seen too much of First Blood 2 and Rambo III, I guess it might be easy to forget that the character is so grounded in reality and is so incredibly psychologically damaged.

He didn't get the girl because they're from two different worlds. The religious "nuts" rejected him because he's a killer. He wasn't "standing in line with the mercs like a hungry dog waiting for scraps," he was quietly shadowing along so that he could make a rescue attempt on the prisoners.

Again, I think you misunderstood the movie and the character, you keep talking like Rambo is supposed to be a supreme badass character like Arnold in Commando, but by this point in the film he's given up his life of war and tried to find some bit of peace.

What I found appaling, though, was not just the wussiness -- Rocky Balboa had enough of that to get me used to seeing Sly being pathetic -- but the slaughter of INNOCENT CIVILIANS.

Not just once, mind you. Most of the film seems to be about innocent civilians -- including women, pets and children -- being slaughtered in the most brutal fashion, just to get the point accross: war is hell and the Burmese are evil assholes.
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Yeah. That's what happens in Burma. That's what happens in war. This film was trying to create a shocking and realistic portrayal of the situation in Burma (a situation that a lot of people are completely ignorant of) and it didn't shy away from the atrocities of war. I think the movie and Stallone are both highly commendable for that.

The real life footage grounded it, and the scenes of the village slaughter and "land mine races" provided an intensely evil villain and stirred a lot of emotions for me. I don't know about you, but by the end of the movie I was fucking stoked when Rambo was on that .50 cal tearing shit up. I've never hated an on-screen villain as much as the Burmese in this movie - and it's pretty chilling that all of this stuff is completely grounded in reality.

When I want to watch a Rambo flick, I want to see Rambo rock and kill lots of bad guys. I don't want to see the bad guys rock and kill lots of unarmed, helpless, innocent civilians.

And what is the justification of this? The film tries to be more "cerebral" and get across that war is violent and the Burmese government has been massacring innocents for years.

Good idea if you're making Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List or Apocalypse Now, but Rambo never was about depth and public service announcements -- it's about a white-hat lone wolf shell-shocked Captain America type war hero serving his own calibre of justice to the enemies of the Free World (i.e. the USA). It never tried to be intelligent and it shouldn't try to be now. Not with Sly Stallone as the lead actor.
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You really don't know what you're talking about. First Blood is an amazingly intelligent and deeply emotional drama about a Vietnam vet who has lost his place in the world. First Blood Part Two is actually pretty smart as well. Rambo III is the only one where he really becomes a characature of himself. You were watching this movie and expecting the wrong thing. Sorry.

I loved Rambo as much as First Blood and I hope Stallone stays as prolific as he has been lately. He's a fine actor and an even better writer and director.
 
I've watched Rambo IV (uncut) yesterday.

I like the violence in that movie (when thouse bad guys where kicked ass).
And I think that the violence is okay for a war movie.
War is evertime very brutal, so it's authentic when we see a lot of gore scenes.
In Rambo is it a "little bit" overinflated,
but it's cool when Rambo slay down the bad guys 8-)
 
Loxley said:
rcorporon said:
Or, when the Americans firebombed Dresden near the end of WWII, nearly 120,000 CIVILIANS were killed.
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Allies firebombed dresden, when the allied firebombomed dresden. Mostly british and american as far as I understand.
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True that, I also heard that Dresden had launched an independent investigation into the firebombing that was supposed to be released sometime this year. To my knowledge the death toll was more like 60-80K nevertheless, still awful.
 
First Blood is the best, but I liked IV quite a bit as well. 2 and 3 are like, not very good.
 
Rambo, violent? Never.

Joking aside, it is hard to make a movie like Rambo without having extreme amounts of violence, but I don't think that you meant violence, but maybe gore? A vast amount of newer movies really on the gore factor rather than actual story which disappoints me deeply, it's hard to watch a horror or action nowadays without seeing an autopsy done using a dull butter knife.

I'm a fan of the Rambo movies, and war movies in general but I don't feel that they have used too much gore because of the fact the subject they are based on does contain a decent amount of gore.

Violence =/= gore
 
Mikael Grizzly said:
Rambo: First Blood > Rambo
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Maybe I'm dating myself but Rambo was really controversial when it first came out because it was like an infomercial for that survival knife he used (big blade with serrated back, the compass, fishing line, hacksaw, matches etc.). Those things were ubiquitous in the 80s.
 
First Blood is a great movie in its genre. The fourth movie is better than the second and the third, but it still sucks when compared to the first one. First Blood made sense in a way, it had a decent psychological basis that backed up all the violence in it. The other movies don't have that extra level.
 
I must admit to being fairly shallow and simple, but I like watching the movie just for the surround sound, which is excellent on the Blu-Ray version. The old British bomb going off, and the one .50 cal shot to get the troop's attention are amazing. As for the film itself, I agree that it seemed to take itself a little seriously, but to be honest, that is more like what the original First Blood was like.

HEAR ME OUT

Ok, I know, it was still a bit of an odd premise, but Rambo taking on the cops/town in the first movie was actually quite a serious affair. Only the second and third installment went totally nuts.
 
I fucking loved rambo 4.Only element I didnt like were the religous nutcases stinking up the mood.Rambo slaughtering the bad guys was as awesome as always

btw, sly looked really good, considering he's 60.He's ripped
 
Malky said:
He wasn't "standing in line with the mercs like a hungry dog waiting for scraps," he was quietly shadowing along so that he could make a rescue attempt on the prisoners.
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No, no. I wasn't being facetious. He literally got in line and the mercs told him to fuck off and protect the boat. I'm not complaining about him shadowing them, I'm complaining about him expecting them to let him join them and then walking away when they tell him to gtfo.

Again, I think you misunderstood the movie and the character, you keep talking like Rambo is supposed to be a supreme badass character like Arnold in Commando, but by this point in the film he's given up his life of war and tried to find some bit of peace.
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You DO realise that the reason Rambo is a popular character is because he DOES rock hard in Rambo II and III -- even in First Blood he is an action hero, albeit with psychological problems.

I completely agree that the character is more problematic than it is commonly understood, but that's because he has always been portrayed that way. Rambo has always been about an American soldier cleaning up where his country refuses to go.

I'm sorry if you think First Blood was deep and that (John) Rambo was even deeper -- it's not. It tried the same blunt approach for dram that it used for action. Showing massacres for half a film only to excuse it with him mopping the floor with the bad guys later on is TASTELESS. It's cheap and overdone.

You may not realise this, but it's not a political statement, it's a simple technique of having the bad guys "rape the dog", i.e. establishing that the bad guys are so inhumanly evil that there's no redemption for them. The film failed at using that technique because it overdid it.

Yeah. That's what happens in Burma. That's what happens in war. This film was trying to create a shocking and realistic portrayal of the situation in Burma (a situation that a lot of people are completely ignorant of) and it didn't shy away from the atrocities of war. I think the movie and Stallone are both highly commendable for that.
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It's an action film. It's not a documentary. The entire film is made to be an action film. Every single film in the series was an action film.

The shocking portrayal was used as build-up for an entertainment product. It's not an intelligent film, it's an action flick. It tries to be more than that and all it manages to create is a tasteless action flick, but still an action flick.

The real life footage grounded it, and the scenes of the village slaughter and "land mine races" provided an intensely evil villain and stirred a lot of emotions for me. I don't know about you, but by the end of the movie I was fucking stoked when Rambo was on that .50 cal tearing shit up. I've never hated an on-screen villain as much as the Burmese in this movie - and it's pretty chilling that all of this stuff is completely grounded in reality.
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That's exactly what I said. There's no documentary aspect in there. It's a simple dramatisation to build up suspense and mark the villain as prime evil. It's a sledgehammer tactic, no less.

Yes, Burma is bad, but I don't need to see the gory details for half a feature film to understand that. A more subtle approach would have sufficed.

You really don't know what you're talking about. First Blood is an amazingly intelligent and deeply emotional drama about a Vietnam vet who has lost his place in the world. First Blood Part Two is actually pretty smart as well. Rambo III is the only one where he really becomes a characature of himself. You were watching this movie and expecting the wrong thing. Sorry.
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Schindler's List is intelligent. Even Hannibal Rising is intelligent. First Blood is not.

Granted, FB was more intelligent than Rambo II or III, but it still relied heavily on action scenes, explosions and the sexy sound of gunfire. That's not intelligent, that's primal. And it makes the film entertaining as an action flick.

You can make a fast-paced film that's still intelligent, but it's a difficult task and FB (plus sequels) covered way too many action flick clichés to accomplish that. It's clever in the sense that The Dark Night is clever, but it's hardly intellectual.

I loved Rambo as much as First Blood and I hope Stallone stays as prolific as he has been lately. He's a fine actor and an even better writer and director.
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Sly Stallone has never been a good actor. Most of his track record consists of action flicks and that's for a reason. All he can do is the calm loner (who may or may not eventually flip out and serve his brand of justice) and that's where he excels, but he's several years of drama school away from becoming anything remotely close to good acting.

jeremy202 said:
Rambo slaughtering the bad guys was as awesome as always
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Case in point.

Cromlech said:
I like watching the movie just for the surround sound, which is excellent on the Blu-Ray version. The old British bomb going off, and the one .50 cal shot to get the troop's attention are amazing.
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Case in point. .50 cals are NOT "cerebral".

DDRSuperNova said:
That movie was a bloodbath and it was awesome.
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Case in point. Rambo is an action flick.

Sharcc said:
but it's cool when Rambo slay down the bad guys
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Case in point, again.

War is evertime very brutal, so it's authentic when we see a lot of gore scenes.
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Just because something's authentic doesn't mean it belongs in a movie. Do we need to see the characters go to the toilet in full detail or have pornographic sex to understand what they're doing?

It's a question of moderation. It's like bloom in next-gen games: just because you can do it, it doesn't mean you have to use it on EVERYTHING.

John the Deere said:
*snip*
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I agree, it's the gore that makes it tasteless, but it's not a matter of style. Gore done right can make a good film, but gore done wrong can break it.

I don't need to see kids being stuck with bayonets (I've got no problem looking at that but even I agree it's pretty high on the list of "things that shouldn't be in an entertainment film") to understand they're killing children indiscriminately. I don't need to see every single inhabitant of a settlement being torn apart by various means to understand that they're being killed violently. One or two such shots would have sufficed, a thirty-minute gorefest is overdoing it.

It's the difference between erotic and pornographic: tastefulness. It's the reason a McRib is not high culinary art.

Gore is a tool. Saving Private Ryan used it well because it was accurate, explained the trauma of the lead character throughout the rest of the film.

One could argue (John) Rambo is like that, but it's not. It tries to copy that, but it fails to make a point. The result is a tasteless mess full of traumatic scenes that are only there for shock value.


Maybe it's because as a European (or German in particular; censorship ftw) I'm not used to excessive violence in mainstream media, but I'm used to films being less flamboyant. Moderation is key.

Films (at least in German releases) have become more and more in-your-face in terms of violence as of late. At the same time criticism of violence in games has become more popular, weapon laws become more restrictive and support for warfare is on and off.

But even SAW (I and II at least; not sure whether I watched the others) seemed to be in better taste than Rambo. Maybe the Exploitation genre is coming up for a revival through genre-mixes.

I have a strong stomach and have little empathy for the suffering of on-screen characters, but this kind of nigh-pornographic orgies of violence still makes me cringe a bit and consider switching to something more interesting.

The news and documentary programmes show me enough mangled civilians. I don't need to see the same war trauma when I look for entertainment.

Entertainment IS entertainment. People who go to the movies to be entertained won't take home any political messages. They won't suddenly decide to change the world because they see Burmese children being slaughtered. And those that do would have been influenced by many other means more subtle and less disruptive to those that don't.

So apart from pleasing the sadistic gore-junkies and exploiting primal instincts for a better rating (because feeling sympathy for slaughtered civilians is easily misunderstood as "being touched" by a film) all you do is ruin other people's Sunday afternoon by luring them into your propaganda film with false promises of entertainment (and then trying to make up for it with a third-grade flick with an obvious storyline).

If you want to be political, make a documentary or write an essay, don't clutter up the silver screen with an attempt to be "intelligent".
 
You know, this movie explains some things in other 80s type of action movies, for example i noticed that evil armies get slaughtered because they get drunk/stoned and rape prisoners all night. How CAN you expect to function properly in the morning?

But I believe that this movie has one of the greatest quotes in the movie business (not better than 'There are no friendly civilians' from the First Blood movie, but good nonetheless), and that's the part where he's talking to the religious geek:

'Are you bringing in any weapons?'

'Of course not...'

'Then you ain't changin' anything!' :clap:
 
Listen ashma, if you're such a sissy why did you even watch it? If you saw rambo II and III then certainly you knew what to expect?
 
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