Best of the Best

The US puts together a martial arts team to fight against the Koreans in South Korea for some sort of official title.  A few inner demons are wrestled with along the way and by the end they’re all sorted out.  It’s as straight forward as you can get.

There are a few quirky things about this picture though.  For starters I never understood why America and South Korea are the only two countries competing in this tournament.  It seems like the contest is this one time match up because we see the assembly of the teams.  It would be incredibly weird if other fighters got their respective countries to the final round but then were swapped out for completely different people.

Also, the main characters have this strange mix and match quality to them.  Alex (Eric Roberts (Runaway Train)) is from Oregon but works in a GM car plant, Sonny (David Agresta (never did anything else)) is from Detroit but his Italian heritage makes you think more of NYC, Travis (Chris Penn (Footloose)) is from Miami but a total cowboy with the hat, boots and accent, Virgil (John Dye (two episodes of Murder She Wrote)) is from Rhode Island but a Zen Buddhist more reminiscent of a San Franciscan and Tommy Lee (Phillip Rhee (Furious)) is from California and is Korean American.  Ok that last one makes sense but the rest don’t add up.

Another thing is Travis is your token dickhead character who shoots his arrogant mouth off and makes obnoxious remarks including a bunch of racist Asian shit.  What I find odd about this is how can someone this proficient in martial arts have such little respect for Asian culture?  I mean he overcomes it in the end because the movie needs him to but why give him this specific trait?  He can be an asshole in other ways to provide some tension within the team but why all the Asian slurs?

I sorta like how Coach Couzo (James Earl Jones (Three Fugitives)) is handled however.  He’s a serious hard ass who pushes his guys to their limit and for a long while you think he’s simply a miserable prick.  But the reason he trains so relentlessly is because he blames himself for Tommy’s brother’s death in a tournament years ago.  He thinks he didn’t prepare his team enough which led to the worst possible outcome.  Piling on to this is the fact that the man who dealt the death blow, Dae Han (Phillip’s brother Simon Rhee (stunt man par excellence (Blade, Escape from LA, Dark Knight Rises, Birds of Prey))), is who Tommy will face this time around.  Layers, convenient layers, but layers.

What’s kinda funny about the movie is three of the five US fighters end up not doing all that well in the final match.  Alex and Tommy kick ass with Alex even finishing his bout with one arm in a sling!  But the rest of them clearly aren’t up to the task.

This is an ok film.  It’s a light kumite jaunt that’s fun enough but nothing to write home about.

Rhinestone

Now if you expect me to shit all over Rhinestone and call it the worst thing ever and curse its very existence then you’ve come to the wrong place my friend.  Everyone else will try to convince you that it isn’t even worth considering watching let alone actually watching.  Well I’m here to tell you it’s a good movie, not passable or just ok or not as bad as its reputation, but good.

Dolly Parton (The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, music shit) plays Jake, a country music singer/songwriter who has a steady gig at The Rhinestone bar in NYC.  It’s a pretty big place that seems packed every night and the crowd is intense.  They go wild for Jake but if they don’t like you they’ll heckle and boo your ass outta there (an accurate depiction of a NYC horde by the way).  Jake works for the slimeball club owner Freddie Ugo (FU) (Ron Leibman (Slaughterhouse-five)) who’s constantly making gross passes at her trying to get her into bed.  Desperate to escape Freddie’s clutches Jake bets her contract that in two weeks she can turn any person off the street into a country singer.  Right on cue cab driver Nick (Stallone) crashes his ride right in front of them.  They’ve found their victim.

The film works on multiple levels.  First off the premise is silly and fun.  They keep the tone light by making Nick a good sport about the whole situation.  It’s important that Jake and Freddie discuss the bet with him and don’t try to trick him into something he doesn’t want to do.  However, to get Nick on board Freddie does have to promise to buy Nick a new cab.  And yes, Nick is attracted to Jake so that’s a factor as well.  What’s key though is all parties have their cards on the table.

Secondly, believe it or not Stallone and Parton have chemistry.  Dolly is charming as all hell by striking the perfect balance between being sweet when Nick follows her instructions and tough when he horses around.  She works really hard to whip Nick into shape.  She’s so dedicated they even go down to Tennessee where Parton puts him up in her own home so they can soak up the southern atmosphere and get away from any distractions.

And Sly plays up the lug headed New Yorker to a T.  He does the “hey yo” thing and makes a lot of sarcastic goofy jokes but he also sees the bet through and gives it a real shot.  At first he thinks country music is “like worse than liver” but comes around to respecting and liking it.  On paper Stallone and Parton sound like a train wreck but I swear they play off each other well.

Finally, the movie’s funny.  I’ve said before that I avoid comedies in general on this blob because humor is incredibly specific from one person to the next so all I can really say is I laughed out loud a bunch.  Parton gets in her one liners which are great (“the next time you feel romantic don’t call me, why don’t you try the city zoo!”) but it’s more about Stallone and the fish out of water setup that yields a good chunk of the comedy. 

There’s also the constant clash of NYC vs small southern town.  Like when Nick meets a local at a Tennessee bar the guy asks how the mob is doing and what it’s like to shoot up heroin.  Conversely Nick fails horribly at farm work and doesn’t know the proper way to eat southern food.

The thing I probably appreciate the most though is how they treat Stallone’s singing.  Normally in a film like this the lead would either dub his singing after he’d had lots of lessons or hire a professional to take over for him.  But in a tremendous move Stallone does all his own singing live on set and doesn’t pretty it up.  Like when Nick tries to sing at first he yells a rendition of “Tutti Frutti” and bops around all over the goddamn place.  It’s bad but exaggerated so much that it’s obviously played up as a joke.  The thing is his enthusiasm during his performances rubs off and you want to see him succeed and belt out a number with an equally passionate crowd cheering him on.  And by the end Nick improves but he’s still not a good singer really.  It’s the journey, not the end result.  It doesn’t matter that Nick didn’t become an amazing singer in two weeks because he grew as a person and gained some new friends along the way.  The movie doesn’t insult the audience and that’s fuckin’ awesome.

Everyone looks like they’re having a fantastic time making the movie.  The vibe is upbeat and easygoing.  It’s also diplomatic by showing good and bad qualities of both Tennesseeans and New Yorkers.  Jake is hard working and friendly but can sometimes let pride stand in her way.  Nick is daring and witty but also brash and can be stubborn.  The two bring out the best attributes in each other and form a bond from the experience.  That’s cool man.

I wanna say a lot of the hostility towards this picture comes from people who haven’t even seen the thing.  They look at the team up of Stallone and Parton, read the premise and prematurely decide it has to be total shit.  Now nine times out of ten that tends to be the case but this is that tenth time.  I may be alone out here but I don’t care, I’m down with Rhinestone.

Rambo: Last Blood

If you tuned out during the last minute and a half of Rambo then you probably forgot he finally returned to his family home in Arizona.  This picks up eleven years later where he’s now a horse farmer and protective “uncle” to his friend’s (Adriana Barraza (Drag Me to Hell)) granddaughter Gabrielle (Yvette Monreal (Monsoon)).  For the most part Rambo’s at peace except he has to try hard to “keep a lid on it”.

Anyway, Gabrielle finds out her biological deadbeat father is living in Mexico and against Rambo’s and her grandmother’s wishes sneaks off to go confront him about his choice to abandon her and her mother.  When she gets down there the father slams the door in her face and she eventually gets kidnapped into sex slavery.  Rambo then must go rescue her.

The plot is classic action movie stuff with a parent/guardian having to traverse a gauntlet of underbelly grime to get their loved one back.  It’s reminiscent of Commando, Taken, Big Trouble in Little China and more recently Furie.  So this is something I can definitely get behind.

It’s a bit clunky though because a bunch of shit needs to be taken with a grain of salt.  Like the US/Mexico border isn’t an issue with all parties crisscrossing as much as they need to, the bad guys decide to let Rambo live for no reason after almost killing him, there’s an ex machina journalist character (Paz Vega (Acts of Vengeance)) who nurses Rambo back to health but essentially serves no other purpose, the story could’ve easily written out the abandoned father as he doesn’t end up playing a big role in this and etc.

Putting that aside this is the smallest of Rambo’s adventures and that’s nice.  It’s cool to see him in a more low key setting where his mission is so simple yet it becomes a challenge because of his age and because he’s never gone after non-professionals before.  The drug/sex trafficking cartel he goes up against aren’t trained by the military or law enforcement.  They’re as vicious and ruthless as anyone he’s faced except this is in a cityscape, not the forest, jungle or desert.  Rambo seems a little out of his element.

So on one hand Last Blood isn’t completely like a Rambo sequel.  The man doesn’t sport his trademark long hair, bandana or handle a gigantic machine gun.  He’s more talkative than ever and more emotional (save for the ending of First Blood).  He cares more about Gabrielle than probably anyone in the entire series and it shows.  He helped raise her for eleven years and they love each other so when she’s forced to become a prostitute he goes berserk.

On the other hand there are two aspects that are very much in line with the sequels.  The overall story is him going into a foreign country to save someone like we’ve seen for three straight movies already.  And the other thing that’s totally like the sequels is the violence level.  While there isn’t quite as much blood and gore as Rambo there’s sure a helluva lot.  The finale is appropriately over the top too from what we’ve come to expect but man, the Home Alone house of horrors they put together is fuckin’ nuts.  Rambo has this maze of tunnels he dug underneath his ranch over the years (‘cause he knew he would need them one day?) and embedded the whole thing with dozens of absolutely unnerving booby traps.  Spikes to the face, bullets in the floors, holes in the walls for him to stick a knife through and impale you and other shit.  The deathblow to the villain is also maybe the nastiest in the series.  So gruesome.  This part is more like a horror movie.

And the plot turns extremely dark.  Again, more like a horror film.  I won’t spoil it but damn, the movie has some fuckin’ balls to go where it does.  I admit I didn’t see it coming.

Strangely I think I respect this sequel the most.  It’s still sorta unpleasant to sit through but I like what they did with the character and I dig the smaller DTV-esque vibe.  Parts II and III may be easier on the brain if you’re looking for something more casual and they encompass the quintessential Rambo shit that seeped into pop culture.  But if you’ve got an interest in the series don’t neglect Last Blood.

Rambo (2008)

After Afghanistan Rambo went back to Thailand where he’s been captaining a small boat and catching large snakes as a side gig for a local reptile zoo/show.  A group of Christian missionaries want to hire him to take them to Burma (Myanmar) to aid the locals who’ve been ravaged by decades of civil war, genocide as Rambo puts it more accurately.  After four separate pleas Rambo relents to sneaking them in via the river.  The missionaries quickly get captured though and their church’s pastor recruits Rambo and a group of mercenaries to rescue his people.

This is a hard plot to swallow.  If we look back at Part II there were fellow POWs to save, then in Part III friend/mentor Colonel Trautman needed help and now…a group of young folks he met the day before?  Having no real connection to the captives is odd.  This turns the guy into a full-fledged superhero who will be there for (basically white) people when they need him.  And having a pastor organize the rescue mission seems to fly in the face of the reason for sending the missionaries in to begin with.  He has to know full well that he’s hiring unscrupulous guns to murder the captors.  What the fuck?

There’s a religious element to this one that the series hasn’t had before.  An attempt is made to give the titular character some depth by debating faith in humanity and doing the right thing and contemplating if the world can/will change and if that’s worth fighting for and etc.  It’s actually not that poorly done so I’ll give some credit for laying out a greatest hits argument for might vs humanitarianism to heal the world.  Of course the movie definitively says spilling tons of blood is the real answer.  The looks on the faces of the survivors and Rambo’s at the end settles that dispute.

Stallone, who wrote and directed, must’ve gotten some satisfaction out of making the missionaries go through hell to prove his point because he sets them up as idealistic wieners who are absolutely in over their heads.  One crucial scene has them encounter pirates during their passage across the border who hold them all at gun point and demand they hand over the one woman with them.  Rambo dispatches them at lightning speed with a pistol.  Afterward there’s some dissention from the head missionary over the tactic causing Rambo to grab the guy by the throat, slam him against the side of the boat and explain that the pirates would’ve raped the woman fifty times and cut their heads off.  In a stunningly ungrateful move the missionary still says he’s gonna report Rambo for homicide!  It’s bizarre how Stallone wants you to feel contempt for these people, maybe even see them hurt, while at the same time root for their rescue.

Speaking of the violence holy shit is it sky high.  The blood, gore and graphic nature of the combat is way more than in any of the other films.  With all the closeups, quick cuts, shaky cam and CGI blood splatters they did manage to make you feel like you’re in the middle of the action.  It’s a lot to take in and it’s a bit overwhelming.

This one’s sorta miserable to sit through.  It’s not The Nightingale miserable where you wonder if a movie can ever make you feel happy again but it’s not very enjoyable all the same.  I think that was partially Stallone’s intent though.  He wanted to highlight the atrocities going on in Burma by not shying away from some of the most horrific elements.  At least Parts II and III are kinda cartoony where you can brush off a bunch of the zanier shit with a chuckle.  This is totally different.  Rape, child murder, torture, mutilation and mass killings are centerstage and in your fuckn’ face.  The body count is upped again to a colossal 247.  That’s over a hundred more than the previous picture.

Another thing that makes this not fun is we never get to know the villain.  Our only scenes with him are when he’s committing a war crime.  However, this isn’t unique to this film.  A very underdeveloped and uninteresting villain is a staple of the sequels.  They’re all pure evil with nothing on their minds but killing and brutalizing.  They’re a shell of a character whose only purpose is to have something for Rambo to fight against.

I don’t entirely get why John Rambo has been so popular over the years.  I mean he’s pure testosterone so I understand a lot of dudes get off on seeing a jacked up no nonsense motherfucker butcher unequivocally vile foes.  But the sequels are thoughtless and even uncomfortable at times.  He’s a depressing person who doesn’t make me feel good to see him kick ass.  I’m sad that he’s so sad and he knows he’s incredible at warfare but basically a failure at everything else.

Rambo is probably the worst of the bunch so far.  I remember liking it a good deal more when it came out but it rubs me the wrong way these days.