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Rambo

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Rambo (2008)

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Reviews Counted:140

Fresh:52

Rotten:88

Average Rating:4.8/10

Consensus: Sylvester Stallone knows how to stage action sequences, but the movie's uneven pacing and excessive violence (even for the franchise) is more nauseating than entertaining.

Rated: R [See Full Rating] for strong graphic bloody violence, sexual assaults, grisly images and language.

Runtime: 1 hr 33 mins

Genre: Action/Adventure

Theatrical Release:Jan 25, 2008 Wide

Box Office: $42,724,402

Synopsis: Twenty years after the last film in the series, John Rambo (SYLVESTER STALLONE) has retreated to northern Thailand, where he's running a longboat on the Salween River. On the nearby Thai-Burma... Twenty years after the last film in the series, John Rambo (SYLVESTER STALLONE) has retreated to northern Thailand, where he's running a longboat on the Salween River. On the nearby Thai-Burma (Myanmar) border, the world's longest-running civil war, the Burmese-Karen conflict, rages into its 60th year. But Rambo, who lives a solitary, simple life in the mountains and jungles fishing and catching poisonous snakes to sell, has long given up fighting, even as medics, mercenaries, rebels and peace workers pass by on their way to the war-torn region.

That all changes when a group of human rights missionaries search out the "American river guide" John Rambo. When Sarah (JULIE BENZ) and Michael Bennett (PAUL SCHULZE) approach him, they explain that since last year's trek to the refugee camps, the Burmese military has laid landmines along the road, making it too dangerous for overland travel. They ask Rambo to guide them up the Salween and drop them off, so they can deliver medical supplies and food to the Karen tribe. After initially refusing to cross into Burma, Rambo takes them, dropping off Sarah, Michael and the aid workers...

Less than two weeks later, pastor Arthur Marsh (KEN HOWARD) finds Rambo and tells him the aid workers did not return and the embassies have not helped locate them. He tells Rambo he's mortgaged his home and raised money from his congregation to hire mercenaries to get the missionaries, who are being held captive by the Burmese army. Although the United States military trained him to be a lethal super soldier in Vietnam, decades later Rambo's reluctance for violence and conflict are palpable, his scars faded, yet visible. However, the lone warrior knows what he must do...

Sylvester Stallone writes, directs and stars as RAMBO, filmed on location in and around Chiang Mai, Thailand. Also starring are Julie Benz (Dexter), Paul Schulze (The Sopranos), Matthew Marsden (Resident Evil: Extinction, Black Hawk Down), Graham McTavish (HBO's Rome), Rey Gallegos (American Wedding), Tim Kang ("Third Watch"), Jake La Botz (Ghost World), Maung Maung Khin and Ken Howard. RAMBO is produced by Avi Lerner, Kevin King Templeton and John Thompson. Executive producers Randall Emmett, George Furla. Executive Producers Jon Feltheimer, Peter Block, Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein. Executive Producers Andreas Thiesmeyer, Josef Lautenschlager. Executive Producers Danny Dimbort, Boaz Davidson, Trevor Short. --© Lionsgate
[More]

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz, Matthew Marsden, Graham McTavish

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz, Matthew Marsden, Graham McTavish, Rey Gallegos, Jake LaBotz, Tim Kang, Ken Howard

Director: Sylvester Stallone

Director: Sylvester Stallone
Screenwriter: Sylvester Stallone, Art Monterastelli
Producer: Sylvester Stallone, Avi Lerner, John Thompson, Kevin King
Composer: Brian Tyler
Studio: Lions Gate Films

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Release:

May 27, 2008

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Reviews for Rambo

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1 - 20 (sorted by fresh rating)
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Makes First Blood look like Bambi.

Full Review Source: Sun Online | comment Comment
02/22/08
Sun Online

Stallone is smart enough -- or maybe dumb enough, though I tend to think not -- to present the mythic dimensions of the character without apology or irony. Welcome back.

Full Review Source: New York Times | comment Comment
01/25/08
A.O. Scott
A.O. Scott
New York Times
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

I know my credibility could take a hit here, but I am man enough to admit that I enjoyed watching Rambo once again don his famous headband and shoot enemies with his trusty bow and arrow.

Full Review Source: Watertown Daily Times | comment 1 Comment
05/20/08
Adam Tobias
Adam Tobias
Watertown Daily Times

It's not the perfect Rambo film I was hoping for, but it was a pretty entertaining one.

Full Review Source: Sin Magazine | comment Comment
07/22/08
Austin Kennedy
Austin Kennedy
Sin Magazine

Rambo delivers big-time and simultaneously gives a big, blood-covered middle finger to all the neutered action movies of late.

Full Review Source: FromTheBalcony | comment Comment
01/27/08
Bill Clark
Bill Clark
FromTheBalcony

Just like the actor playing him, our hero no longer looks or acts like his predecessor. Oddly enough, as long as he covers his tracks in the entrails of his enemies, we could really care less.

Full Review Source: Filmcritic.com | comment Comment
01/25/08
Bill Gibron
Bill Gibron
Filmcritic.com

While Rambo is certainly not for everyone, it succeeds at being exactly what it sets out to be %u2014 a nostalgic, actionpacked, gore-splattered ode to the antihero of a bygone era.

Full Review Source: Colorado Springs Gazette | comment Comment
02/28/08
Brandon Fibbs
Brandon Fibbs
Colorado Springs Gazette

A literal goulash of gore, and I was quite taken with the fearlessness of it all. The overall responsibility of the film is open for debate, but nobody can say that Stallone didn't reach for the bloodied brass ring with this splendidly bonkers concoction.

Full Review Source: eFilmCritic.com | comment Comment
01/24/08
Brian Orndorf
Brian Orndorf
eFilmCritic.com

We need John Rambo. In an age of mistrust and bureaucratic cowardice, it is comforting to know there is a hulking great protector to keep the world in check.

Full Review Source: Mansized | comment Comment
05/13/08
Chris Laverty
Chris Laverty
Mansized

The end result of Rambo IV is akin to that of The Dead Pool, the fifth (and probably final) Dirty Harry movie. Yes, it is the least of the series, but years later, fans of the character will be glad it exists.

Full Review Source: FulvueDrive-in.com | comment Comment
01/25/08
Chuck O'Leary
Chuck O'Leary
FulvueDrive-in.com

However you parse the character's evolution, Rambo the film shows a peculiar understanding of changes in the industry.

Full Review Source: PopMatters | comment Comment
03/21/08
Cynthia Fuchs
Cynthia Fuchs
PopMatters

Stallone has never made a movie as purely intense and visceral as this.

Full Review Source: eFilmCritic.com | comment Comment
01/26/08
David Cornelius
David Cornelius
eFilmCritic.com

If bringing back Rocky and Rambo opens him up to more ridicule from the likes of me, it’s also the kind of challenge at which he excels. Idiotic as Rocky Balboa was, the punches landed, and Rambo works on its own debased terms, too.

Full Review Source: New York Magazine | comment Comment
01/25/08
David Edelstein
David Edelstein
New York Magazine
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

...fans of the [action] genre flat-out owe it to themselves to check out the movie theatrically (if only to encourage the studios to quit making watered-down garbage like Hitman and Live Free or Die Hard).

Full Review Source: Reel Film Reviews | comment Comment
01/24/08
David Nusair
David Nusair
Reel Film Reviews

Rambo earns the Red Badge of Carnage.

Full Review Source: CHUD | comment Comment
01/23/08
Devin Faraci
Devin Faraci
CHUD

Damned if Stallone doesn't get us rooting for Rambo to kick bad-guy butt one more time, the same way we cheered on Rocky's improbable return.

Full Review Source: Film Journal International | comment Comment
01/28/08
Ethan Alter
Ethan Alter
Film Journal International

At its best when it considers the shell of a man its hero has become; the ways that war and violence have become a part of his being, and what that has done to him.

Full Review Source: Film Blather | comment Comment
01/24/08
Eugene Novikov
Eugene Novikov
Film Blather

An entertaining and adult send off to a rather corny character...

Full Review Source: Cinema Crazed | comment Comment
02/12/08
Felix Vasquez Jr.
Felix Vasquez Jr.
Cinema Crazed

Sly may be a crass tyrannosaurus, but he's not a fake

Full Review Source: CinePassion | comment Comment
08/27/09
Fernando F. Croce
Fernando F. Croce
CinePassion

Stallone is back. Rambo is back. It even ends with a nice bookend to First Blood. You might pick apart some of the plot or some of the mercenary dialogue, but that's not the point. The point is to give Rambo fans the ultimate Rambo movie.

Full Review Source: Can Magazine | comment Comment
01/24/08
Fred Topel
Fred Topel
Can Magazine
 
 
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Latest News for Rambo

September 08, 2009: Stallone Releases Synopsis, First Poster for Rambo 5 Opens in new window
You heard that the fifth "Rambo" was going to pit the titular hero against a drug-dealing slave ring, but as it turns out, Sylvester Stallone's plans for the next sequel are a... More...

August 31, 2009: Fifth Rambo Gets a Green Light Opens in new window
Sylvester Stallone will "fight his way through human traffickers and drug lords to rescue a young girl abducted near the U.S.-Mexico border" in the fifth "Rambo" installment,... More...

January 29, 2009: Stallone Mulling Over Another Rambo Opens in new window
Are you ready for more Rambo? Sylvester Stallone is -- and he's just told Extra that the only thing he needs to do is decide "whether to do it in America or a foreign country." More...

July 28, 2008: RT on DVD: Harold & Kumar, Doomsday and Dark City Director's Cut
Since we're all still recovering from Comic-Con 2008, and tons of new home video details dropped at the Largest Nerd Gathering in the World, it's time for RT on DVD: Geek... More...

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