Julie Benz

Yeah I know, this script has already been talked about, but Mr. E’s take is so funny I just couldn’t pass it up. Besides I am a big Rambo fan (no, really) and I can’t wait to see this film!

Mr. E here. Late, late last night I couldn’t sleep. So I stopped by one of those 24-hour wicker and rattan places. Don’t ask me why, but the smell of bamboo and shellacked reeds mellows me out better than counting sheep. As I entered the former World’s Market, I paused to hold the door open for my friend Rebecca, an employee, who was one-handing a mirror 3 inches thick and 4 feet tall out to the parking lot.

"Anything good?" I asked.

"You’ll know it when you see it!" she replied with a grunt.

I passed by tables of brass Indian mini-gongs, boxes of paper Chinese fingertraps, displays of porcelain Pan-Asian waving kitty dolls, baskets of American 8-track tapes, shelves of Swiss Lindt dark chocolate bars (Mmmmmmm) and rack after rack of Melbourne Old-and-Yellow - Australia’s best known fighting wine. My eyes eventually came to rest on a dust-covered script, its brass brad fasteners shining under a red shaded Tunisian Nose light.

I shook off the extra thick layer of dust to uncover the words ’PEARL OF THE COBRA’ (RAMBO 4) by Sylvester Stallone. I looked around for Rebecca.

"How much?" I asked.

"Oh that?" She shrugged her impressively tattooed shoulders, "Free...free for Mr. E."

"You’re the best!" I said. I sprinted out the door, drove home and started reading.

"PEARL OF THE COBRA" (RAMBO 4) is a lousy title. Lousy, because titles in quotation marks are usually reserved for titles of television series: "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is the show; Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the movie. Got it? And when was the last time a flick with a subtitle in parenthesis did any serious box office business? Not counting I AM CURIOUS (YELLOW), of course. What did you say? The movie is called JOHN RAMBO now? Oh - never mind.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Anyway, the movie opens on a serious note - showing a MAP of VIET NAM, CAMBODIA, THAILAND, and BURMA. The opening text tells the audience of BURMA’s genocide of the KAREN people. This civil war/genocide has been going on for over fifty years where the ruling armies of BURMA’s atrocities include torture, rape, mutilation and mass murder.

Following a montage of actual news footage, we go to a Burmese rice paddy, where BURMA’S MAJOR PA TEE TINT and his lackey, LT. AYE, play a deadly game with their soldiers resulting in the deaths of FIVE KAREN MEN.

After the credits roll, we move to THAILAND apparently and find JOHN RAMBO catching poisonous snakes by the side of a river with his aptly named co-workers: SNAKE CATCHER #1 and SNAKE CATCHER #2. Catchy, eh?

We spend some time with them and their snaky lives, but we are interrupted by American MISSIONARIES MICHAEL BURNETT and SARAH MILER. They want to hire RAMBO to take them into BURMA, so they can distribute medicine, supplies and Bibles to the KAREN PEOPLE, and if they have time, maybe teach them The Lord’s way of making babies. (Okay- it doesn’t say the last part exactly-but they are MISSIONARIES, right? Right!)

After RAMBO and SARAH meet and share a special connection (nothing sexual mind you, but JOHN takes to her like any 60 YEAR OLD MAN who knows exactly where his bottle of Viagra is stashed), he agrees to take BURNETT’s group up the river to BURMA.

ED BUMGARDNER intercepts RAMBO the night before the trip. Although BUMGARDNER has CIA written all over his face, he claims to be with the "Office of Overseas Activities" and gives JOHN the rambling "Us and Them" speech and the equally rambling "I know who you are" speech. Are STALLONE’s politics preventing him from calling the CIA the CIA here? Or is the BUMGARDNER character just being an ass?

Later, on the river, RAMBO and SARAH talk about stuff including THE PEARL OF THE COBRA - an amulet worn by RAMBO - which contains good luck mumbo jumbo mystical powers, including the ability to make the audience forget Stallone’s 1986 bomb COBRA.

There’s the obligatory run in with RIVER PIRATES that ends really badly for THE PIRATES. RAMBO is left shaken by the experience. He hasn’t killed anyone since the last movie and boy, you know, once you open them floodgates of wanton violence and blood lust, it’s hard to close ’em up again.

ImageAfter the drop off and JOHN’s pained farewell to SARAH, RAMBO goes back home, pausing to bury the dead and to ditch his TRADEMARK RAMBO T KNIFE. What he doesn’t know is that his scenes are intercut with MAJOR TINT and the Burmese Waylon Smithers LT. AYE attacking the very same village the MISSIONARIES have set down in. There is lots of death, destruction and mayhem, fire, crying women and babies and MAJOR TINT just watches.

You know where this is going don’t you? BUMGARDENER talks RAMBO into going on a rescue mission with FIVE MERCENARIES: DIAZ, LEWIS, SCHOOL BOY, REESE, EN-JOO and one more MISSIONARY - ARTHUR.

That’s right: RAMBO forges a new knife in a scene so macho, I could practically hear the bombastic fake Jerry Goldsmith (RIP) score play as I read it.

And then:

The motley crew go up river and into the BURMESE jungle, passing by LANDMARKS which were so obviously set up to be a part of the big end battle, it was like RAMBO paused in front of each one, and pointed to it, solemnly looking into the camera with his big puppy eyes.

Night Falls over the BURMESE JUNGLE COMPOUND and RAMBO’S RAIDERS strike. I don’t have to tell you that there are deaths on both sides (except our guys die brave deaths and the bad army guys are slaughtered like sheep), RAMBO saves SARAH and MAJOR TINT - the cardboard cutout that represents everything evil in the film - is offed and lots and lots of stuff blows up.

END SPOILERS

RAMBO 4 did educate me on the actual horrors of what is going on in Burma today, and for that, I’m actually thankful. But as for the rest of it? The only RAMBO movie I ever saw was just the part of RAMBO 2 (I’m guessing here) that was in GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH where RAMBO rumbles: "To fight a war you must become war!"

But, I have heard and read enough about RAMBO to give an appraisal of this film. RAMBO 4 is just not a very good RAMBO movie. Giving RAMBO a crack rescue squad seemed more DELTA FORCE than RAMBO to me. And where were the audience pleasing RAMBO moments like the time he blew up a Helicopter with just a bow and arrow, or the time dropped out of a tree, the very tree the cop just happened to walking under, or the time he shot a really big gun as he emerged from some body of water, his pecs and all of his other muscley parts quivering in slow motion?

And the ending? It was more of a "I’m going to Disneyland" ending, than the one I really wanted to see: JOHN RAMBO stares into the sunset, the wind whipping his STALLONE MULLET off his face, a shredded AMERICAN FLAG flapping on a rusty pole behind him.

RAMBO 4 is the Action Movie on Viagra. If Stallone really believed that the slaughter in BURMA should get more attention worldwide, he should’ve just filmed RAMBO 4 in Anaheim at the DISNEYLAND Jungle Cruise and donated his multi-million dollar paychecks to an organization trying to do good, like the KWO, the Karen Women’s Organization