Harry Knowles of AintItCoolNews.com has posted the following montage of footage from John Rambo — previously known as Rambo IV — and you’ll have to watch it quick if you want to see it at all, since Harry says he’s taking it down after a couple days. Warning: This is bloody, brutal stuff; unlike a certain other 1980s action-movie franchise that is being revived right now, this one seems to be going out of its way to hold on to the R rating.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ColXeVm-gxY
Click here if the video file above doesn’t play properly.
Of course, those who remember how Sylvester Stallone went out of his way to court the religious media for Rocky Balboa will notice the overt religious content here. But what does it mean? Is the juxtaposition of the violence with the so-called Prayer of St. Francis nothing more than irony, or do these things represent opposites that can and must be reconciled? Is faith like the woman in a typical Western — a voice of pacifism and civility that is fine and good and has its place, but which the hero must ignore, when push comes to shove, in order to rid the world of evil? Or will Rambo come to repent of all the violence which the film so clearly delights in depicting — and if so, how could such a plot twist make a deeper impression on the viewer than these rather visceral images? Or is it possible that the film will bring faith and violence together, and show how one gives its imprimatur to the other? The trailer doesn’t seem to point that way, but you never know …
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