Word from Variety is that Sly Stallone is strapping on his Olivia Newton-John headband and prepping for more Rambo carnage. The film will officially mark the fifth First Blood chapter. The story, from reports, will apparently center around a young girl kidnapped near the US-Mexico border. Because if you want human traffickers punished, you don’t send Mira Sorvino and Donald Sutherland, you send muthafuckin’ John G. Rambo! Check out Variety for the rest of the deets.
I absolutely love the Rambo series. First Blood is one of those movies I revisit about once a month. There is something so entirely satisfying about seeing Sly solve entire socio-political quagmires and shape the landscape of war all by himself. And First Blood is an interesting take on veteran affairs (as in don’t fuck with them!). Rambo is the hero we all wanted to be as kids; badass mercenary who could live off the land and kill with his bare hands. I also feel that Stallone is one of the few action movie dinosaurs that can still kick truckloads of ass. All that being said, I am not at all excited by this announcement.
Over the last….number of years, we have been subjected to numerous half-assed rehashings of our most beloved film franchises. In fact, McAssFace reassured us that trend to be alive and well with the catastrophic Terminator Salvation. When I finally got around to watching 2008’s Rambo, I had the lowest of low expectations. But what I witnessed was a filmmaker who took control of his legacy and created a gift-wrapped thank you letter to the fans. Say what you want about the grizzly, unrelenting violence of the film, it delivers everything we love about a Rambo flick.
Not only that, but it also perfectly bookended an amazing story. Not to spoil anything, but it redirects Rambo’s threadline back to the events of First Blood and sends him off into the proverbial sunset in a way no other franchise even attempted. Stallone went back to the well and found an incredible moment of denouement. It honestly tugs at my heart strings each and every time I watch the last five minutes of Rambo. But that’s it, the tale is over. Stallone gave us the exquisite finish and to try and do another film smacks of the type of irresponsible film making that lead to T4 and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Come on Sly, let sleeping dogs of war lie. You’ve proven that you are much smarter than anyone could have imagined and that you have some serious chops behind the lens, why tarnish that? But I have been wrong before.
