I was really impressed by Rocky Balboa ... and I guess it was a little dumb of me to expect Sylvester Stallone to do the same here as he did there; part because, in a sense, I guess he has done the same as he did there, only, not in the way I expected. Rather than instill the franchise with something more than the basic high concept formulaic nonsense as he did with “Balboa”, he’s really made here the definitive Rambo movie, just as he made the definitive Rocky movie in “Balboa”. I think the best review of this I’ve read recently said something along the lines of, it would probably feel more at home and play better on a crappy VCR, pan-and-scan and tracking problems included lol. He’s been that faithful to the general feel of the series.

Which is a shame – I figured especially with the titling of the installment, he was going for the same thing as Rocky Balboa ... reclaiming the franchise and showing ‘em how it’s done after being disappointed for years with how the sequels to his greatest successes were being treated. The last half hour of violence here goes some way towards making it worth watching … but it’s really mostly a letdown all the way. He had a gift here in that the title hadn’t even yet been used in the series (“First Blood” having been the title of part one) ... boy does he squander it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 7th, 2008 at 8:20 pm in 2 hearts, Movie Reviews and tagged as action, violence, war. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.