Rambo (Widescreen) (2008)

Reel.com 7 of 10
Make no mistake about it, this is the real "gorno"...Things blow up in Rambo. They blow up real good. Stallone has taken the forgotten skill of human detonation and turned it into an art form...Rambo is a pleasure of the guiltiest, most gratuitous kind. It's the typical heroes-and-villains formula on human growth hormones, laced with crack. It satisfies one's instinctual Neanderthal bloodlust and busts as many taboos as it embraces. This is a movie that blows big holes in kids during commonplace village raids, where angry goon squads lop limbs off the elderly and rape the ladies, both before and after they're dead...And that's exactly what this mindless action movie does. It's like XXX porn substituting evisceration for fornication. None of the supporting characters are memorable, and the plot is merely a setup followed by splatterific payoff. But when you're dealing with a one-dimensional death machine like Rambo, disemboweling, dismemberment, and decapitation are all the depth that's required. Longtime fans may wonder where the tired solider with the wounded soul from First Blood went. Just like the actor playing him, our hero no longer looks or acts like his predecessor. Oddly enough, as long as he covers his tracks in the entrails of his enemies, we really couldn't care less. - Bill Gibron
 
San Francisco Chronicle 5 of 10
By now, Sylvester Stallone seems to have accepted that his two lasting contributions to civilization are Rocky Balboa and John Rambo, and his new film "Rambo" is a product of that acceptance. It's a straight-ahead action film that makes the first 30 minutes of "Saving Private Ryan" look like a debutante ball. It's 90 minutes of flying, dismembered limbs and explosions of blood, but give the man credit. Stallone can do action. If you want action and nothing but, here it is...Does this mean Stallone is stuck? No, but his public probably is, and Stallone knows it. In "Rambo," he does his job, providing himself with good one-liners, pithy aphorisms ("Live for nothing, or die for something!") and opportunities for him to kill literally hundreds of people in a matter of minutes. He goes out and gives us a "Rambo" movie...The "Rambo" movies are wedded to the action formula, which means that they have to end in victory, and Stallone is too smart to mess with that. Actually, he shouldn't mess with that. But just once, after the bodies are buried - or better yet, left to rot - I'd like to see Stallone explicitly pursue and acknowledge his implicit message with these films, that it's all compromise, that it's all awful, and that life is such a complete waste of time that you really might as well blow $10 on the new "Rambo" movie. - Mick LaSalle