Dorkgasm Gonzo Is God

I Love the Smell of Nostalgia in the Morning
By
Michael C. Riedlinger
Editor-In-Chief

            I remember my childhood in the 1980’s very vividly. My friends and I would run around the forest behind my house with Entertech squirt guns pretending to be John J. Rambo, killing dirty cops or evil commies. We all carried pocket knives that we would pretend had compasses, sewing kits, and an assortment of other tools we would need to take out “the bad guys”. For us, the Rambo franchise wasn’t about how we treated Vietnam War Veterans, or how America was tougher than any Red State out there (though the cold war indoctrination certainly took its roots), it was about one man overcoming huge odds and winning the day. It was about a hero.

Remember this shit? Hell yeah!

            The latest, and hopefully last installment of this series, simply called Rambo this time, is about that hero BLOWING SHIT UP AND MELTING DUDES WITH A .50 CAL, HOLY SHIT!!!! This one is three minutes shorter than the original, probably because we don’t get the emotional story of some war buddy losing his legs in a bar this time. No, this time it is almost all business. I remember adults complaining when I was a kid that the Rambo movies were too graphic. Stallone seems to have remembered those complaints too, and this film takes the level of violence up a notch almost as a giant middle finger to critics of yore. The documentarian camera style he uses in the film allows him to show us rape, infanticide, and gruesome death-by-arms shots that would have earned this film an “X” rating twenty years ago.

            Stallone does do something with Rambo that makes sense though. In the original, the cops were bad guys not because they were cops, but because they were evil sonsabitches. Here, the Burmese are portrayed as villains because of their actions as well, and much of the graphic violence we see comes about because of their inhumanity. Be it gang raping young girls, slaughtering entire villages for sport, or kidnapping young boys for sweet sweet love… Wait, huh? Yeah, okay, problem for me there. I frankly don’t care if my villain is raping boys or girls; rape is rape and that’s it. Stallone’s main baddy, however, has a thing for young boys, so I guess the franchise really is a Republican voter at heart, but I digress.

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            Rambo isn’t alone in this film either. He has a team of mercs at his side who all seem to be veterans… Of either Ghost Whisperer, CSI, or Law & Order. Minor character actors all, you’ll see them and think, “I know that guy from something”. As throw away characters you might think they’d be dying left and right, but they don’t, because they wear the proverbial white hat. It seems that the villains in this film have impeccable aim, but only if they are shooting at civilians, so don’t get worried about our troop of heroes.

            Of course, there is also a rudimentary plot in action here. Julie Benz (Dexter, CSI, Law & Order… see a trend here?) is inexplicably taken captive while performing missionary work in a village with her beau, played by Paul Schulze (CSI, Law & Order, Oh fuck it, you get the point…) and Rambo is the man who delivered them into the mouth of these beasts. As such, he has no problem going in to the war zone to save them after the couple’s church hires the merc team to get them out again. Body parts start flying, a bunch of bad guys get holes punched into their chests and heads with an assortment of weapons (the bow and arrow kills are especially testosterone-rific!) and Rambo saves the day. Everyone important survives and everyone who deserves a bullet gets one. Okay, so some get arrows or suffer evisceration by gigantic knife, but you get the idea. Yes, the knife is back and bigger than ever because, in the last twenty years, Rambo picked up weapons forging. In the next film, he will craft Excalibur and travel back in time to kill commie Romans in ancient England!

            There I go again. In the closing scenes, Stallone does something that I think might actually have pleased the author of the original novel, David Morrell. We hear the music from the opening of First Blood and see John J. Rambo walking down an American Highway, Army sack slung over his shoulder. He actually smiles and approaches a large Arizona horse ranch, and the mailbox on the front says “R. Rambo”. The man is finally at peace; he is finally home. Then you will go home and wish to holy god for a big black squirt gun to chase people around with while eating raw beef and flexing your very manly muscles at every passerby! Okay, so maybe there isn’t THAT much testosterone, but you get the idea.