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Rambo
Lionsgate


8.9

based on 26 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 259 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for strong graphic bloody violence, sexual assaults, grisly images and language

Starring Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz, Paul Schulze, Matthew Marsden, Graham McTavish, Rey Gallegos, Tim Kang, and Jake LaBotz

Twenty years after the last film in the series, John Rambo has retreated to northern Thailand, where he's running a longboat on the Salween River. On the nearby Thai-Burma border, the world's longest-running civil war, the Burmese-Karen conflict, rages into its 60th year. But Rambo, who lives a solitary, simple life in the mountains and jungles fishing and catching poisonous snakes to sell, has long given up fighting, even as medics, mercenaries, rebels and peace workers pass by on their way to the war-torn region. That all changes when missionaries are captured by the Burmese Army. Pastor Arthur Marsh turns to Rambo for help. Although the United States military trained him to be a lethal super soldier in Vietnam, decades later Rambo's reluctance for violence and conflict are palpable, his scars faded, yet visible. However, the lone warrior knows what he must do. (Lionsgate)

GENRE(S):	Action \| Drama \| Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Sylvester Stallone
DIRECTED BY:	Sylvester Stallone
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: May 27, 2008 Theatrical: January 25, 2008
RUNNING TIME:	93 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA / Germany

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

A straight-ahead exercise in brutality.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

A sort of parody "Apocalypse Now," complete with listless coochie dancers entertaining the Burmese troops, the movie finds its own heart of darkness once Rambo drops the doctors in Burma.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust

Moved to take charge by something like chivalry, Rambo hits his stride in the film's second half, meting out justice in an unjust world and ultimately the movie works best when warbling its out-of-tune greatest hits.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Rambo teaches that fighting sucks, good intentions can be futile, and coalitions of the willing are a charade: A man's got to do what a man's got to do.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

In the Rambo canon, where does this one fit? The tone is closer to "First Blood" but the body count is more "Rambo III." No matter how one dices and slices this new Rambo, the first one in 20 years, it will likely please fans of the long-in-the-tooth series.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The result is the farthest thing from a bland, spineless sequel: It's a brutal, insanely excessive successor to grindhouse pictures of yore.

Slate Dana Stevens

Rambo combines an unapologetic return to the grand action-movie tradition of blowing shit up (one explosion is so big, it leaves behind its own miniature mushroom cloud) with a "Saw"-era interest in close-ups of human viscera.

Variety Brian Lowry

Stallone (who looks fit but mostly keeps his shirt on) has no intention of bogging the action down, but it's still a notably cheerless exercise, without knowing winks or stabs (pardon the expression) at humor. It is in all respects, rather, a completely workmanlike effort.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

The movie does have its own kind of blockheaded poetry.

LA Weekly Jim Ridley

Gorier, meaner and uglier than anything Sylvester Stallone has made before, and as such damnably effective in rousing your blood lust, this wind-up groin kicker of a movie seems initially as wary of being pulled back into a dirty job as its reluctant hero.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Rambo works best as a pure action movie devoted to delivering the cheapest kicks imaginable--and to a much lesser extent, to bringing attention to human-rights violations and genocide in Asia.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

This muttering boatman seems to have lost his old-time heroism. No longer is Rambo killing for a cause, but for kicks. And his portentous blather, even by Rambo standards, becomes unintentionally hilarious.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

The 61-year-old Stallone would deserve a measure of respect for pulling Rambo off, appalling as it is, but this Fangoria-worthy circus of horrors also features footage of actual Burmese atrocities.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Like a lost recording by the Beatles, Sylvester Stallone's Rambo arrives with its feet planted firmly in the past, a reminder of a time when Stallone, Chuck Norris and other wooden soldiers of the big screen filled multiplexes with the floor-shaking thunder of trivialized war.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

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.

Premiere Eric Alt

Rambo is surprisingly effective as an action movie precisely because the villains seem truly dangerous and the "mission" truly a death wish.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

In short, No. 4 is one big snore.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

The movie is neither cathartic nor entertaining. The action scenes (and there are many of them) feel mechanized and calculated.

Empire Roberto Sadovski

Rambo could have been a satisfying romp - wherein bad dialogue and cardboard characters can be forgiven - but for the sin of making the main man step to the sidelines in favour of charisma-free fillers. Bad move, Sly...

New York Post Kyle Smith

Needlessly violent? No, Rambo is needfully violent. Johnny R. is a man constructed of violence.

Boston Globe Mark Feeney

Rambo isn't dull. It is, however, often murkily directed, a real shortcoming in an action movie. In the big rescue-the-prisoners sequence, it's very hard to keep track of who is doing what to whom where.

Austin Chronicle Steve Davis

There will be blood in the ultraviolent Rambo, a movie that depicts both heinous acts and righteous reckoning with equal degrees of flying body parts and arterial sprays.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

The orgy of violence, as ghastly as in any video game, should go a long way toward erasing whatever goodwill Stallone earned with his sentimental "Rocky Balboa."

USA Today Claudia Puig

There is a blessed dearth of dialogue, but much of it is unintentionally hilarious.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Stephen Cole

Can anyone still be rooting for Rocky or Rambo?

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

With its first-person-shooter perspective and gun-andrun narrative, this one’s for the PlayStation crowd. It’s not a movie. It’s an adrenaline pump and purveyor of raw carnage.

The average user rating for this movie is 8.9 (out of 10) based on 259 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Robert F. gave it a10:
Fantastic 4th installment for the Rambo series. High energy, powerful story line and great acting/directing.

Jake H. gave it a9:
Yow!!! Bloody and Gory... Just the way i like it.

Andy P gave it a9:
I wasn't expecting much, but the new Rambo is destined to become a cult classic. The violence is way over the top and the story line the same. I laughed out loud four or five times. Not a war movie or an action movie, what I relate it to is a Italian horror flick. Ridiculous and and fabulous at the same time, but not for the faint of heart or haters of blood and guts.

[Anonymous] gave it a9:
This is an awesome movie. I don't get why this has a bad rating. And truthfully, after seeing this movie, I said in loud words, "Holy Sh*t!" This is the most violent film I've seen since Saving Private Ryan. This is gore to the extreme. The film is awesome and massively underrated.

Peter J. gave it a9:
Fantastic movie. While it may be a bit gorey, this is reality over there. A Rambo shoot em up with a political message. Couldn't have done a much better job. The critics have officially lost their minds.

Mark S. gave it a9:
Hi, I had no trouble with Rambo. When you’re banging away at each other with fifty caliber machineguns things get messy. Personally, I don’t think films now days are messy enough. Once you’ve been on a battlefield where the stink is bad enough to make one vomit, then you’ll under stand. Once you’ve been in the garbage of war then you’ll know why some people never want to see another. Rambo’s right when he says “Old men start them and young men fight them,” and General Patton was right also when he said, “American’s love the sting of battle.” But then who is this thing, this abstraction, called an American? Anyone I’ve met who’ve really experience heavy combat, never wants to see it again. My only problem with the film was that Rambo does go home and he just wonders into the United States. Just think of the reality of that. This wrecking machine would realistically have one to hundred warrants for his arrest and no up-to-date passport. Our boarder cops would arrest him immediately. He would not be welcomed home. Oh God, the plot for the next Rambo film? Mark

MiKE gave it a7:
Very enjoyable, very graphic and brutal action scenes. decent story, but the ending left me wanting more. Overall a big suprise in how good the movie was.

Rambo Lionsgate

Rambo
Lionsgate