Rambo

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

A straight-ahead exercise in brutality.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

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.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust

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.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

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.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

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.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The result is the farthest thing from a bland, spineless sequel: It's a brutal, insanely excessive successor to grindhouse pictures of yore.

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.

Variety Brian Lowry

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.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

The movie does have its own kind of blockheaded poetry.

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.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

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.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

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.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

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.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

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.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

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.

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.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

In short, No. 4 is one big snore.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

The movie is neither cathartic nor entertaining. The action scenes (and there are many of them) feel mechanized and calculated.

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...

New York Post Kyle Smith

Needlessly violent? No, Rambo is needfully violent. Johnny R. is a man constructed of violence.

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.

Austin Chronicle Steve Davis

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.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

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."

USA Today Claudia Puig

There is a blessed dearth of dialogue, but much of it is unintentionally hilarious.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Stephen Cole

Can anyone still be rooting for Rocky or Rambo?

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

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.