Stallone: no more Rambo or Rocky
Sylvester Stallone has bid sweet adieu to his two most memorable cinematic creations, Rambo and Rocky, despite the successful launch of Rambo in the US last weekend
The ageing action hero defied a mauling from the critics when his fourth, eponymously titled Rambo instalment debuted in second place in the US charts with a decent haul of a little over $18m (£9.1m).
“This is the last Rambo just as Rocky Balboa is the last Rocky,” Stallone told reporters. “I can’t go any further. It was a miracle that it even got done.”
Stallone’s comments may come as a surprise to Harvey Weinstein, however, who said on Sunday that he expected the series to continue after the film’s auspicious release.
The Rambo and Rocky films have grossed hundreds of millions of dollars around the world and are an immensely appealing prospect to the pack of executives like Weinstein that like to surround money-making ventures.
Stallone produced, directed and starred in Rambo, in which the famously monosyllabic former Green Beret dons the face paint one more time for a hostage rescue mission in Burma.
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All blood, no guts for ‘Rambo’
As he did with Rocky Balboa in 2006, Sylvester Stallone has resurrected his dejected Vietnam vet John Rambo for one final screen adventure. But where Rambo was once a macho symbol of 1980s excess, mowing down bad dudes in an over-the-top, comic book fashion, this Rambo — paunchy, sullen and prone to uttering fatalist statements like “(bleep) the world” — bares little resemblance to the sweat-drenched, shirtless superhero of yore. This Rambo — he introduces himself as “John” — is a hulking mass of once-toned muscle hiding beneath an oversize T-shirt, his face an aging, sorrowful slab of melting clay.
And once the violence starts — oh yes, there will be blood, as well as severed limbs, spilled guts and grisly decapitations — there’s no sheath of patriotism for the audience to hide behind. It’s brutal, unsettling and appalling.
“Rambo” opens in Thailand, with Rambo collecting cobras for an underground snake-fighting ring. (That can’t pay well.) He’s hired to guide a group of American missionaries to Burma, where they’ll bring aid to the citizens of the war-torn country. But when they’re captured by soldiers and held captive, it’s up to you-know-who to bring them back.
Stallone co-wrote and directed “Rambo,” and its early scenes pick up where 1982’s “First Blood” left off. Rambo is more of a character here than he was in “First Blood’s” bloated sequels, and the years of wear on his used tire of a mug speak volumes about Rambo’s life since we last left him 20 years ago.
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