Between Reviews: Last Blood
LAST BLOOD
FEB 10, 2008 - TILL LATE LAST YEAR, IF YOU’D ASKED ME to name a forthcoming film that would transport us to another era, I’d have picked Sudhir Mishra’s Khoya Khoya Chand – but that well-intentioned misfire came nowhere close to triggering the seismic jolts of nostalgia that this year’s Rambo has. It wasn’t a theatre I stepped into; it was a time machine to a decade where screens were monopolised by hulking slabs of muscle with thesping talents hovering between a one and a minus one. The opening minutes of Rambo set up exactly what kind of primal he-man we are (and were, in those days) dealing with – one who catches a snake with his bare hands, and a minute later, is poised at the edge of his boat, shooting an arrow cleanly through a fish in the waters below. No, we don’t see director and star Sylvester Stallone rubbing together two pieces of flint under a thick slab of meat stripped off the wild bison he subdued with his biceps – but I don’t see why not. The monosyllabic-at-best Stallone creates a screen persona that harks back far beyond the eighties – to man before the creation of language, before the onset of civilisation. It’s as if he walked right out of myth and right into the movies.
Rambo is the sort of film where the scriptwriting discussions wouldn’t have centered around plot or character so much as the number of ways a human being can be creatively dispatched from this earth – the bloodier the better. And woven into this carnage is the odd sliver of macho poetic justice: “If you go against me, I will feed you your intestines,” hisses a Burmese despot, who eventually meets his end through disembowelment at the hands of our hero. If this film were an advertisement, here’s what the push would be: 0% Brain, 100% Brawn. The only other star you can imagine in these roles is Schwarzenegger, and it’s telling that once the eighties ended and the nineties began, both these heroes began to fall by the wayside. Bruce Willis had, by then, brought in a mocking self-awareness to the action hero, and today, our definition of an action hero is the sleek Jason Bourne, whose reflexes may be quicksilver, but whose entire frame could be folded neatly into three and tucked away into one of Schwarzenegger’s deltoids.
But to see Stallone in Rambo is to see a mountain of muscle, as if Frankenstein had selected the beefiest cuts of domestic cattle and slapped them together in his makeshift jungle lab. And the jolt of electricity that sparks this Creature to life is the kidnapping of Christian medical workers (or are they missionaries?) by the bad guys in Burma (home to the longest-running civil war ever, we’re helpfully told through a title card, as if it really mattered). What follows is the dictionary definition of slick, mindless entertainment. Actually, let me rephrase that – for there’s not a single stretch here that measures up to the elegant dance of death that Michael Mann orchestrated in his bank heist sequence in Heat, and neither is there anything resembling the resourcefulness (the exploiting of the surrounding scenery, say) that Mel Gibson displayed in his marvellously crafted Apocalypto. There’s just one thing keeping Rambo from becoming another by-the-numbers action adventure, and that thing is Stallone. This film is indefensible on a great many levels – as so many films of the eighties were – but if you’ve grown up in the era, you owe it to your inner teen to make the trip to the theatre. It’s as good a fix of nostalgia as you could hope for till the new Indiana Jones installment cracks its whip this summer.
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Stallone seems to be making a habit of single-handedly bringing back the 80s; did you get a chance to watch the latest rocky? He’s old, but man can he kick some butt!
I expected some over-the-top, jingoistic, Reagen-era action, and I got it. Not a great film, but damn, it was entertaining.
More reviews “between reviews”?
Was waiting for this one.
And btw, Mithya is quite good… Saw it in Bangalore over the weekend. I really hope it makes it to Madras.
A dark comic thriller that made my rather expensive weekend trip to Bangalore totally worth it.
I’m still in denial that this movie got made. I guess tamil cinema is not so different in that it still lets a few dinosaurs still create movies. Speaking of Indiana Jones, Shia Lebouf (of “Transformers”) has a role in the new movie. If he plays a grad student sidekick I’ll be upset that Kal Penn wasn’t considered. I mean who wouldn’t pay to go see a desi grad student help Indy discover Rasputin’s grave or whatever he’s looking for this time.
Rambo almost changed winter to the peak of an Aquarian summer for me, and every guy who walked out into the air had a smile that said, “Damn, I can’t believe how much I enjoyed it. Wait, what in the hell happened to our action movies?!” People, do not pass on it. Stallone is not here for DVDs!
Arvind: No, didn’t catch the Rocky, but then, other than the first two, I was never a fan. I mean, Draco?
Ravi K: Yeah, what you saw was what you got.
randramble: Yeah, isn’t that nice? And here I thought I’d be talking about other things
Suderman: Hey that’s nice to hear. Hope to catch Mithya this week, as it’s getting released here.
Deepauk M: A lot of people are still in denial. And Rasputin’s grave?
APALA: But I do think we get good action movies every now and then. Maybe not MACHO action movies, but what about the Bourne series?
Dear BRangan:
Only Bourne (THE BEST EVER!!!) and Live Free or Die Hard had the old style action with CG work placed at the right place in the right amount (well except maybe the final fighter aircraft scene in Live Free or Die Hard). From Spidy to Potter (though getting darker by the film is good!) to Pirates - had really filled and spoiled by the over usage of CG!!
That’s why I think Rambo was really good! (But don’t you take anything away from Bourne though!! Bourne RULES man and you know it!!!)
The last instalment of Bond wasn’t bad either. It was filmed in the old style way. I loved it!!
brangan: “…Stallone creates a screen persona that harks back far beyond the eighties – to man before the creation of language, before the onset of civilisation. It’s as if he walked right out of myth and right into the movies” — Now this alone makes me want to go see Rambo…maybe I will.
Sagarika: You should. Now stop commenting and go back to the life that’s hit you with a vengeance
brangan: Tell you what? Maybe a rare moment of epiphany just blindsided me. Maybe “the life that’s hit [me] with a vengeance” ain’t gonna take me places I want it to…you know, places that perhaps commenting could coincidentally close the circuits to?