For all of Rambo's enjoyably absurd superheroics and chunks-a-flyin' combat -- not to mention its nostalgic spectacle of a Reagan-era action hero shredding hundreds of greasy louts -- it's that phrase, more than anything else, that lingers in the mind: War is in your blood. Read it, hear it, memorize it -- and don't be surprised to see it on bumper stickers or t-shirts after Rambo has left theaters, and newspaper critics have all had to write pieces explaining why this supposed liver-spotted relic of a film made so much money. Like its three predecessors, Rambo strikes a nerve, and it's not a nerve that America's left-leaning critical establishment wants struck.Matt concludes: "Rambo is America's undying warrior spirit made flesh -- a human incarnation of the "sleeping giant" that Japanese Admiral Yamamoto claimed had been awakened by Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor. By defining Rambo this way, and pitting him against murderous, torturing, decadent Others who, unlike Rambo (and us), have no code, no sense of decency, no humanity, this series aims to show that our nation is right even when it's wrong, and that it makes war because it is a righteous warrior nation in a barbarian world. The warrior spirit is America's defining trait, the double helix from which the rest of its character is built. We've come full circle."
[Adds the AV Club: "Stiffly written, woodenly acted, and indifferently directed, yet full of s--t blowing up real good and motherf------s getting killed, Rambo is fun-bad, then bad-bad, then ultimately fun-bad again, before its abrupt end. A plea for international intervention in Burma cunningly disguised as a B-movie bloodbath, Rambo is paradoxically both a condemnation and celebration of mindless slaughter."]
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