“John Rambo”, the rebirth film for Stallone, now on Prime Video

The recent availability of the last two parts of the “Rambo” saga on Prime Video allows a replay of episode 4, directed in 2008 by Sylvester Stallone himself, and underestimated since.

Mal-loved by critics, John Rambo (2008), fourth part of the franchise, coincides with the return to favor of Sylvester Stallone during the second half of the 2000s, after Rocky Balboa (2006) and before the first Expendables (2010), all produced by him. In retrospect, it would be enough to ignore the other episodes – two Reaganite action films, in 1985 and 1988, plus a superfluous conclusion, in 2019 – for the saga Rambobegun by a reference work on post-traumatic stress disorder (Ted Kotcheff, 1982), takes on the appearance of a solid diptych.

What is striking, first of all, is the geopolitical relevance of this opus 4 – which its successor, a Trumpist punitive expedition against the Mexican drug cartels, will not have. A contemporary of the “saffron revolution” of 2007, he unvarnishedly describes the atrocities of the civil war in Burma, ongoing since the end of the 1940s with an upsurge in clashes in 2021. He shows the abuses (sacking of a village, massacre of inhabitants) committed by the Burmese army, controlled by the ruling junta, and takes the side of the rebels of the Karen National Liberation Army.

“His” best action film

Symbolically, we find Rambo, traumatized by the Vietnam War, in Southeast Asia. Exiled in Thailand, far from his native country, he captures venomous snakes. Before a group of Christian humanitarians (then a detachment of mercenaries) asked him to reach Burma via the Salouen River. The minerality of Stallone, silent at the helm of the boat, gives him the air of Charon, ferryman of Hell in Greek mythology. The frenzied idealism of the missionaries is opposed to the disillusioned lucidity of the veteran – man is a wolf to man. Transformed, in his youth, into a killing machine by the American army, the latter tries to contain his violence. Until it resurfaces, (very) suddenly, during an attack by Burmese pirates.

“It’s the best action film I’ve done because it’s the most credible. I’m really proud of it! »declared the actor-director during an interview for The Hollywood Reporter, in November 2022. On a ridge between gore and realism, the final battle – a butchery – uses old-fashioned special effects: liters and liters of fake blood, a heavy machine gun loaded with blanks, tested on a mannequin filled with 100 kilos of beef. Hence a twilight violence, inherited from Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Horde, The Straw Dogs).

The sequence shocked some critics at the time. Complacency? Fascination? Sadism? It would rather be an expiatory response to the “entertaining” barbarism of opuses 2 and 3. The intelligence of the film, coming from a moralist tradition of American cinema, consists of making the violence vengeful (mercenaries, including Rambo ) as sickening as the gratuitous violence (of the junta soldiers). A frontal representation, which refers to the self-loathing felt by the “hero”, as if he were holding the camera – one of Stallone’s biases in directing. John Rambo is, as such, consistent with the spirit of David Morrell’s novel, First Blood, first stone of the saga. After that, he can conclude in the United States, very close to his father’s ranch in Arizona. Walking, original clothing and brassy music, to complete the circle with a poignant return home.