haha... yea I had a day off . Actually hit my head really fucking hard on the edge of an overhead cement stairway I didn't see, and it left me with a big lump, nausea, and a lot of pain in my left eye for some reason. Ice pack treatment later, I decided what better way to give my head some rest than to get through a few of my movies on my new plasma. 12 hours later, it still hurts when I lower my head, but I did manage to polish through four movies today. I still have about 50 more DVDs (accumulated over two years!) waiting to be viewed (official Asian versions of movies cost about $4, so yea cheap). It has been really fun, because aside from trips to the theater, I haven't had watched too many movies at home during the past two or three years.
But back to Rambo 4. It was surprisingly gory and quite brutal.
Some of the subject matter was also a difficult to watch. There were a few moments where women were abused and brutally raped. There was a pedophile general, which again, was disturbing.
Here is a tidbit from wikipedia:
Reception in Burma
The Burmese military junta has ordered DVD vendors in Burma not to distribute the film due to the movie's content.[23] Rambo is available on bootlegs however, and it is a great hit amongst the Karen Freedom Fighters and Burmese exiles critical of the Burmese military dictatorship.[citation needed] According to Karen Freedom Fighters, the movie gave them a great boost of morale. Burmese Freedom Fighters have even adopted dialogue from the movie (most notably "Live for nothing, or die for something") as rallying points and battle cries. "That, to me," said Sylvester Stallone, "is one of the proudest moments I've ever had in film."[24] Also, overseas Burmese have praised the movie for its vivid portrayal of the Burmese military's oppression of the Karen people.
Again, the movie wasn't brilliant, but it was still quite entertaining, and very watchable.
It is also easy for a movie like this to feel like it is taking advantage of a real world tragedy merely to create a cheap sense of empathy for its main characters, but I thought Stallone rose above that by giving the tragedy in Burma a fair portrayal, and not insulting our intelligence by letting the Rambo character come off as some noble freedom fighter. His motivations were made quite clear, and the few civilians that were saved, were saved as a side effect of Rambo's main goal rather than anything else.
To be honest, a lot of these action films can turn into AMERICA FUCK YEA, which this clearly wasn't, which impressed me.
I am not trying to make the movie deeper than what it was, but it did handle that aspect of it admirably.
