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From the very first musical strains Rambo is hearkening back to First Blood, the original film in the series whose title character has since become a household name. This glossing-over of two forgettable sequels is a smart move, and it sets the tone for a film which, save for a greatly aged protagonist, could easily have come as the second film instead of the fourth.

This film finds our hero far away from the world, catching snakes somewhere near Burma. A group of missionaries arrive, he cautions them, gives them a ride into Burma, and then flexes his muscles without surprise when he learns that they never made it back. For a brief moment towards the beginning there is the feeling that Rambo is evoking the memory of Vietnam, making reference to staying out of the world's problems and things never changing (I.E. genocide). This bringing of the saga full-circle to the conflict where it began is an intriguing idea that is quickly lost in a deluge of blood.

In the first film John Rambo held himself back, reigned in his instinct to kill, never even finishing off his nemesis in the film, a small-town sheriff. Here, however, he begins by gunning down a boatload of Burmese pirates and doesn't stop until he's shot, decapitated, and disemboweled a small army. If ever there was any idea behind Rambo, thoughts to the effect of minding your own business or pacifism being as deadly as genocide, they're lost when the bloodbath begins and are never found again.

A few fascinating concepts are batted around in Rambo, but are quickly discarded when they get in the way of the carnage, because it would be far too much work to decide where to stand when gunning down the bad guys is so much simpler. But for what it is, Rambo is a success.

Old, grizzled, and jaded he's still got it, and watching his demonstrate that for the better part of two hours is surprisingly entertaining. The film also makes a good call in throwing in a supporting cast of mercenaries who, far from being subtle and nuanced characters, do add something of a foil for John.

Every time I think about Rambo I get to thinking about how, originally, the character was meant to die at the end of First Blood, a move which would have rendered it impossible to create any sequels. Preview audiences didn't like it, and so he survived to fight several more times. While I still feel that, dead or alive, there should never have been more than one Rambo film, this is about as good and end-cap (fingers crossed) that I could hope for, and the fact that it tries to bring back memories of the first film while practically ignoring the second and third leads me to believe that perhaps I'm not the only one who thinks so.

I think I liked this movie more because I had no expectation whatsoever, which is good because, had I had any, it would not have lived up to them. The characters, even the fun, wise-cracking Johnny, were more like cardboard cut-outs than actual fleshed-out characters. You had the tough/smart babe (Jessica Alba) the brilliant yet awful at relationships scientist (Ioan Gruffud) the take-nothing-seriously-yet-become-a-hero-in-the-end wise-cracker (Chris Evans, and lastly the only decent character, the man who becomes twisted and must live with his deformity and learn to embrace his power (Michael Chiklis).

However, after acknowledging this, I could actually sit back and moderately enjoy the movie. The first half-hour was the best, then it got a bit tedious while we waited for the clobbering to start, then it started and, after it kept clobbering for the entire last half-hour of the movie, it was quite tiring.

I like it a lot better in retrospect than I did immediately after, but it is no classic. Then again, you could do a lot worse, take Hulk for example.