Do We Need Another Rambo?
I went to see I Am Legend yesterday. Fairly good film, but the real thing that got under my skin was the preview for a new Rambo movie.
Sylvester Stallone is not what one thinks of when you mention high cinema, but he also isn’t what you think of when you say deadbeat actor, either. Normally, these kind of reprise roles are made for actors that can’t pay their bills. Just think of all these band reunion tours: Eagles, Rolling Stones, Led Zepplin, and the Sex Pistols, they’re all about cash. But can Stallone really be that hard up for money?
In the late Seventies Stallone created a character and wrote a script about a rags to riches boxer named Rocky. It’s difficult to look at Stallone and think the man capable of writing his own name, let alone a classic film, but he did. I can’t say I really like Rocky, but you can’t deny that it is a fairly enduring piece of cinema. (Hell, I can’t stand The Big Chill either, so my tastes don’t always fit with critics or the viewing public.) So, the big guy isn’t an idiot, he just plays one on the big screen.
Now, you also can’t deny the fact that he is a big guy, and that sort of naturally pushes him towards action roles, nothing wrong with that, either. But what are we doing revisiting a war that we lost over thirty years after the fact? And, more importantly, why are we are we doing so in such a godawful fashion? Is it just to see things explode using a character that is already recognizable?
I don’t like to make any calls to action here (apart from the popular “Click on the donate button”), ’cause I don’t think that’s why people go to humor sites. But please, don’t go see this movie. It may be the next smash hit in some critics eyes, but let it die in the theaters in a day. Maybe, if we stop watching recycled garbage from the eighties we’d get some new stories, instead of TV shows reinvented for the big screen, or sequels to movies that didn’t need sequels (American Psycho and 8mm didn’t need another film, really).
You want to see things go “boom” (and lord knows I like an explosion) then go see American Gangster or even Hitman for crying out loud. But let’s leave the further tales of John Rambo on the cutting room floor where they belong.
