Ho-ly, who has seen the new Rambo ? I had the pleasure of watching this the other day at my brothers house and it was outrageous. I don’t even know if I’d call it good or bad, all I know is it somehow warped time whilst I was watching it and this 90 minute movie felt like it was only half an hour long. That’s a special feat in these post-L.O.T.R days where even the makers of Spiderman think it’s all good to make 3 hour extravaganzas - it isn’t, and the sooner they stop that shit the better.

Back to the movie though, I was never a Rambo kid. I’d say it was before my time, but I’m familiar with Arnie movies of the same time period so I don’t really know why I haven’t watched any of them being that Commando and Predator (especially Predator), are my sheeeeit. Subsequently, watching this movie gave me no nostalgic value whatsoever. What it did give me was 88 laughs at the violence/gore depicted in it. I’d say spoilers ahead but who gives a fuck ?

He rips dudes/armored trucks/gunboats apart with this mounted chain gun, and i mean RIPS them. Following on from the picture you see above, he tears the dudes throat out, with his bare hands. There is also a scene where the baddies make a whole bunch of P.O.W’s run through this knee high marsh - which they’ve previously thrown a bunch of land mines into - as a game to see who can get to the other side alive. Bear in mind that none of this is that ‘implied’ type gore, where you see the deed about to unfold then it just shows the guys eyes, or people looking away in disgust etc.. this actually shows people getting waaaasted. LOL.

Surely the old Rambo’s are nowhere near this, and it’s crazy to think about how much further we take the depictions of violence in film now. What used to be reserved for Takaashi Miike and the like is straight Hollywood now. Just have a look at an R18 (that isn’t a porno) from the 80’s and crack up at the tame-ness of it. You gotta wonder how much further people will push it, and whether it’s actually a good thing or not. I mean damn, it already seems like an eternity ago when Sopranos and Sex in the City first screened on NZ TV and I was thinkin “whoa, they are swearing on TV shows”. Oh how times have changed.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 11th, 2008 at 12:12 pm and is filed under Entertainment, Me against the world. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.