Rambo Blu-ray

[WriteSimply]

The "cheese" factor on this movie is not high; I'd say medium. But that's on some dialogue and story setup, and not on the action sequences. Stallone cares about the subject matter. Otherwise he wouldn't have done it; Rambo 3 has the same "serious" subject but that was watered down with high-cheese Hollywood action.

The level of violence is at the top. It's not too stylized which makes it even more disturbing. The violence on the Redband trailer is all here. I wonder if Stallone would release an Unrated cut on BD; I doubt it because it defeats the purpose of showing how gory and ugly war can be. I don't know the MPAA's rating on this but don't bring your kids in even if it's an R. It'll give them nightmares.

The supporting cast did a good job. The script was adequate with some interesting ideas presented. As Rambo, he didn't have much to say but I think Stallone wants us to listen to the conversation like Rambo was, and put your own thoughts into it.

The sound mixing and design were great. It'll be a good demo disc though again the audience you're demoing should be above 18. The VFX work was mostly great and very realistic. Some of the roto work wasn't too convincing but you need to know what to look at. The big surprise was that the production didn't hire the big companies to do the sound mixing and VFX. So this was in essence a mid-low budget movie.

This is essentially a war movie. Less technically challenging that Saving Private Ryan, which have a high replay value based on cinematography alone, it may prove in time to be a cult hit. It's not an "entertaining" movie. But for the subject matter and the idea that war-time PTSD never really goes away, John Rambo aka Rambo 4 is worth watching.


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