| 80 |
Film Threat
A straight-ahead exercise in brutality.
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| 70 |
Village Voice
A sort of parody "Apocalypse Now," complete with listless coochie dancers entertaining the Burmese troops, the movie finds its own heart of darkness once Rambo drops the doctors in Burma.
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| 70 |
Los Angeles Times
Moved to take charge by something like chivalry, Rambo hits his stride in the film's second half, meting out justice in an unjust world and ultimately the movie works best when warbling its out-of-tune greatest hits.
|
| 67 |
Entertainment Weekly
Rambo teaches that fighting sucks, good intentions can be futile, and coalitions of the willing are a charade: A man's got to do what a man's got to do.
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| 63 |
ReelViews
In the Rambo canon, where does this one fit? The tone is closer to "First Blood" but the body count is more "Rambo III." No matter how one dices and slices this new Rambo, the first one in 20 years, it will likely please fans of the long-in-the-tooth series.
|
| 63 |
TV Guide
The result is the farthest thing from a bland, spineless sequel: It's a brutal, insanely excessive successor to grindhouse pictures of yore.
|
| 60 |
Slate
Dana Stevens
Rambo combines an unapologetic return to the grand action-movie tradition of blowing shit up (one explosion is so big, it leaves behind its own miniature mushroom cloud) with a "Saw"-era interest in close-ups of human viscera.
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| 60 |
Variety
Stallone (who looks fit but mostly keeps his shirt on) has no intention of bogging the action down, but it's still a notably cheerless exercise, without knowing winks or stabs (pardon the expression) at humor. It is in all respects, rather, a completely workmanlike effort.
|
| 60 |
The New York Times
The movie does have its own kind of blockheaded poetry.
|
| 60 |
LA Weekly
Jim Ridley
Gorier, meaner and uglier than anything Sylvester Stallone has made before, and as such damnably effective in rousing your blood lust, this wind-up groin kicker of a movie seems initially as wary of being pulled back into a dirty job as its reluctant hero.
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| 58 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Rambo works best as a pure action movie devoted to delivering the cheapest kicks imaginable--and to a much lesser extent, to bringing attention to human-rights violations and genocide in Asia.
|
| 50 |
Washington Post
This muttering boatman seems to have lost his old-time heroism. No longer is Rambo killing for a cause, but for kicks. And his portentous blather, even by Rambo standards, becomes unintentionally hilarious.
|
| 50 |
New York Magazine
The 61-year-old Stallone would deserve a measure of respect for pulling Rambo off, appalling as it is, but this Fangoria-worthy circus of horrors also features footage of actual Burmese atrocities.
|
| 50 |
New York Daily News
Like a lost recording by the Beatles, Sylvester Stallone's Rambo arrives with its feet planted firmly in the past, a reminder of a time when Stallone, Chuck Norris and other wooden soldiers of the big screen filled multiplexes with the floor-shaking thunder of trivialized war.
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| 50 |
San Francisco Chronicle
It's 90 minutes of flying, dismembered limbs and explosions of blood, but give the man credit. Stallone can do action. If you want action and nothing but, here it is.
|
| 50 |
Premiere
Eric Alt
Rambo is surprisingly effective as an action movie precisely because the villains seem truly dangerous and the "mission" truly a death wish.
|
| 40 |
The Hollywood Reporter
In short, No. 4 is one big snore.
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| 40 |
Salon.com
The movie is neither cathartic nor entertaining. The action scenes (and there are many of them) feel mechanized and calculated.
|
| 40 |
Empire
Roberto Sadovski
Rambo could have been a satisfying romp - wherein bad dialogue and cardboard characters can be forgiven - but for the sin of making the main man step to the sidelines in favour of charisma-free fillers. Bad move, Sly...
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| 38 |
New York Post
Needlessly violent? No, Rambo is needfully violent. Johnny R. is a man constructed of violence.
|
| 38 |
Boston Globe
Mark Feeney
Rambo isn't dull. It is, however, often murkily directed, a real shortcoming in an action movie. In the big rescue-the-prisoners sequence, it's very hard to keep track of who is doing what to whom where.
|
| 30 |
Austin Chronicle
There will be blood in the ultraviolent Rambo, a movie that depicts both heinous acts and righteous reckoning with equal degrees of flying body parts and arterial sprays.
|
| 30 |
Chicago Reader
The orgy of violence, as ghastly as in any video game, should go a long way toward erasing whatever goodwill Stallone earned with his sentimental "Rocky Balboa."
|
| 25 |
USA Today
There is a blessed dearth of dialogue, but much of it is unintentionally hilarious.
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| 25 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Can anyone still be rooting for Rocky or Rambo?
|
| 0 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
With its first-person-shooter perspective and gun-andrun narrative, this one’s for the PlayStation crowd. It’s not a movie. It’s an adrenaline pump and purveyor of raw carnage.
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