No more Mr. Nice Guy

JOHN RAMBO is still alive, still kickin', not about to go gently into that good night.

Leave it to other old boomers, wrinkled and puffy as prunes, to make bucket lists of things they are going to do before they die.

John Rambo lives in the Thai jungle, catches cobras for a living, has packed on 40 pounds of muscle since he chased the Soviets out of Afghanistan, and he's making a list of things he's going to do before he kills people.

Job one: Fire up the hearth, heat a piece of steel, and hammer it into the shape of a machete you will use to behead the most despicable man on earth.

In "Rambo," the guy is a colonel in the Burmese army, presented here as storm troopers fronting for what is described as the most repressive regime on earth - a government that tortures and kills Buddhist monks and is engaged in the genocidal extermination of a Burmese Christian tribe, the Karen.

Rambo ferries U.S. missionaries on their way to provide medicine to the Karen, and when the missionaries are captured and imprisoned, Rambo and a team of mercenaries set out to free them.

This fourth "Rambo" spends a good deal of time establishing the wickedness of the Burmese army beyond doubt - beyond the ability of even hardened filmgoers to withstand the rapid-stop parade of atrocity that director Stallone presents (how is this movie not rated NC-17?).

There are mass executions, single executions, rape - all photo-realistic. Peasants are used for homicidal gaming and target practice. Others are set aflame, children are executed at point-blank range, and a baby is tossed into a heap of flames. And the fellow who supervises this abuse is, on top of everything else, a pedophile.

I'm sure Stallone would say that he's out to document the oppressiveness of the Burmese military/government. Conveniently, the scenes also prime the pump for the even bigger orgy of revenge violence that accounts for the movie's final third.

Rambo, incidentally, bears little resemblance to the aggrieved, marginalized Vietnam vet of "First Blood." He's more the cartoon avenger of parts two and three, inflated here to the size of a surly bear.

Rambo helps the missionaries, rescues them, but flatly rejects the idea that their aid will change anything. The movie shares this view, positioning the pacifist good intentions of Christian do-gooders as a waste of time.

Force is the answer, he says, and so he unleashes his caged inner warrior. When a couple of thousand Burmese troops pursue Rambo into the jungle, you see what a mismatch it is. He slaughters hundreds with an armored, large-caliber machine gun.

I guess it's the Rambo equivalent of a feel-good moment, but I remembered an earlier scene - Burmese troops grabbing teenage conscripts at gunpoint. You wonder how many of these bull's-eyes even wanted to be there.

You go in ready to see Rambo kick butt. A grueling hour-and-half later, you feel like the butt he's kicked is yours. *

Produced by Kevin King, Avi Lerner, Sylvester Stallone and John Thompson, written and directed by Sylvester Stallone, music by Brian Tyler, distributed by Lionsgate.