Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz, Matthew Marsden
Directed by Sylvester Stallone

John Rambo returns to the big screen to do what he does best. But Rambo is no brainless killing machine. Although he won't hesistate to eliminate, Rambo must once again be persuaded to set aside his loner lifestyle and engage in a dangerous and deadly mission for the greater good.

We find John Rambo living quietly as a snake trapper in Thailand when a missionary team from Colorado comes looking for a means upriver to wartorn Burma to fulfill a humanitarian mission. Rambo refuses repeatedly, knowing what kind of trouble these passionate though naive and stubborn individuals are about to get themselves into. He finally gives in to the incessant badgering of female missionary Sarah Miller (Julie Benz) and gives the group a ride to Burma. After the missionaries go missing, a desparate church leader hires mercenaries to attempt a rescue. As his boating services are required once more to transport this very different team to Burma, Rambo decides that this time he won't stay behind.

As the ragtag group of rescue men come upon the village that the missionaries were taken from, the stench of rotting flesh and atmosphere of death overtakes them and repulses even these former British SAS and Special Forces operatives who have "seen a lot of shit."

Rambo is not a "straight" action film, as many reviewers have been calling it, where you can sit back and relax and have a good time, because there is nothing relaxing about being mortared out of the blue, and nobody's having a good time when scores upon scores of innocent villagers are being brutally slaughtered. It's a raw look at a civil conflict within one nation and the visual effects do not skimp on the blood and guts, because real war isn't pretty. As the large caliber bullets fly, the bodies shred in gruesome fashion as Rambo and the team fight to make it back to Thailand alive.

Because Rambo is most certainly an action movies with a deeper political meaning, one begs the question of humanitarians, when is it too risky to undertake a mission. Trying to help oppressed peoples is all well and good, but if you get in trouble like Sarah and crew in this film did and other people end up losing their lives to save you isn't that a bit selfish?

For the critics and others that think this is a horrible, badly made film, maybe they just can't face terrible truth of a failed state in turmoil and the true colors of the cowards who are responsible for genocide. Yes, it's a horrible film to watch, because it's sobering and shocking to our tender American eyes seeing just the kind of havoc dictators in Southeast Asia engage in against people whose only "crime" is being born into a certain ethnic group. This is the kind of terror that the Devil himself cannot even fathom. So if you're content to remain insulated and ignorant about the realities of the world then don't see this film.