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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 9, No. 7 |
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CRITICS FUMBLED
At left, Sylvester Stallone's fourth in the "Rambo" series and first in 20 years. At right, Gregory Hoblit's brilliant "Untraceable" with Diane Lane. Both films were savaged by the majority of critics. |
Both are taut, violent,
suspenseful movies
of TheColumnists.com
It was no surprise to me that movie critics were waiting in ambush for Sylvester Stallone's "Rambo," the latest in his series about human killing machine John Rambo after a 20 year absence from the screen. Stallone has been a target for smartass critics ever since he mumbled his way to fame in the original 1976 "Rocky" and became a box office hero to action fans everywhere.
One critic called the new film "one big snore" while another wrote that Stallone had "a face only the international box office could love." The critic for E! Online probably tweaked Stallone's nose the hardest, writing that he "looks like an overcooked Ball Park frank."
Meanwhile, a cadre of critics also were lining up to take potshots at director Gregory Hoblit's latest film "Untraceable" starring Diane Lane. The highly regarded Peter Travers wrote in Rolling Stone: "If hypocrisy was a crime in movies 'Untraceable' would be facing a firing squad."
Both pictures opened in January at about the same time. So far "Untraceable" has been leaving no traces at the box office, but the loyal fans of John Rambo have made the Stallone film a comfortable success, though not the blockbuster the studio probably hoped for. I can't help but think the negative reviews cost both films millions of dollars in unsold tickets.
It took me awhile to check them out for a couple of reasons. First, they both opened in a shabby local theater generally reserved for crummy horror pictures and dumb teen comedies. I'm not keen on seeing anything in that dump and I suppose the bad reviews had their effect on me, too. I didn't see them until last week, as both were hanging on by a thread at two different large chain multiplexes in downtown Seattle, where I was stuck for a couple of days with nothing better to do.
Well, to my surprise, "Untraceable" turned out to be a very well-made topical thriller with something serious to say about the world we live in today. Later in the week, I went online and dug out the reviews by a few critics whose opinions I respect. I thought the best, most on-point review was that of venerable Roger Ebert in The Chicago Sun-Times, who called "Untraceable"..."a horrifying thriller, smart and tightly told, and merciless."
The following day, I dragged my wife into an afternoon screening of "Rambo" and she began to sulk, whining, "Isn't there something better playing somewhere in all of Seattle?" But then the movie roared into action and she began to sit up straight and lean toward the screen. When the film was over, she graciously owned up to the fact that she liked it quite a bit, even though she thought Stallone 'looked awful' and the violence was overwhelming."
My online search for good reviews of "Rambo" didn't pay off quite as well as my search for a few good notices for "Untraceable," but I did find several that conceded Stallone's film was exciting and actionful, including the review in, of all places, The New York Times.
My feeling about "Untraceable" is that there's absolutely nothing wrong with this fast-paced and thoughtful suspense film--and loads of praiseworthy merits. I wanted to find something good in it since I have admired Greg Hoblit for years, ever since I knew him in my TV critic days as one of the creative bright lights behind NBC's "Hill Street Blues," the revolutionary crime show that was probably the best overall TV drama series of the 1980s. Hoblit was the director of so many great "Hill Street" episodes and was the man who gave it its "wandering camera" stylistic look by adapting documentary cinema verite techniques to TV drama.
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 At left, Sylvester Stallone waits to disembowel someone in "Rambo." Above, Diane Lane plays an FBI agent specializing in cyber-crime in "Untraceable." |
As a feature film director since 1996's "Primal Fear," Hoblit has demonstrated great skill in creating suspenseful cinema. Among his earlier films in that category are "Frequency" (2000) and last year's "Fracture" with Anthony Hopkins. I think "Untraceable" is his best suspense film so far.
Diane Lane plays an FBI watchdog of cyberspace, part of a very computer-savvy team working out of Portland, Oregon. She ferrets out a web site that surfaces every now and then with content that's indeed horrifying, if it's real. The webmaster sets up a situation in real time in which a camera locks onto a victim of his own bizarre kind of internet sacrifice, starting first with a stolen cat. People who come to the site can watch the poor little animal die on camera.
Next the webmaster chooses a human victim--a man he has snatched off the street to serve as the centerpiece of this nightmare demonstration of live reality TV. The man has been slashed with a series of superficial cuts, but he's being pumped full of a powerful anti-coagulant. The more people who "tune in" on the internet to watch him suffer, the more anti-coagulant is pumped into the man's veins.
Special Agent Jennifer March (Diane Lane) finally brings the news to her superiors: This maniac has devised the ultimate reality TV ratings device: The more people who become addicted to watching, the more rapidly the man bleeds to death on camera.
The computer genius behind this stunt is also a master at covering his tracks, routing his signal through Russian-based servers where U.S. law can't touch them or shut them down. Almost immediately, the pyscho builds an enormous fan base and pretty soon as many people are cheering for the killer and his torture schemes as are yelling for the authorities to stop the maniac.
What adds to the suspense from the start is the discovery that the site where this stuff is originating is probably right there in Portland. Doubt about that vanishes quickly when the corpses of victims start turning up in local spots and the webmaster taps into the FBI's own computers and, ultimately, kidnaps one of its agents and turns him into the star of the next reality horror show online.
Diane Lane is one of the best, most likeable and convincing actresses in pictures today and she wastes no time getting us wholly involved in her desperate hunt for the online psycho before he comes after her, her daughter or her friends.
Asssuredly, there are uncomfortable moments to sit through when one victim is locked into a chamber with wet concrete poured around his feet and chemicals pumping into the chamber that convert the liquid in it to pure battery acid, cooking him alive.
Is "Untraceable" guilty of the voyeurism it indicts, as Peter Travers suggested in his Rolling Stone review? Possibly, but how else do you tell a story that so vividly demonstrates how cruel and evil the American soul might become if we continue to expose millions to "reality" television that seems to escalate in hideous detail more and more each year? I believe there probably already is a huge audience out there for just the kind of "entertainment" this movie indicts--and probably willing commercial sponsors, too.
This is the mark of a fine movie, in my estimation. "Untraceable" not only rocks you with suspense and excitement, but leaves you thinking about the horrible direction our thrill-hungry media seem to be leading us in these days.
"Rambo" makes no pretensions to a message. John Rambo is a disturbed man whose persona has grown ever darker since he first appeared in the pages of David Morrell's exciting novel "First Blood" and then in the 1982 movie of the same name starring Stallone as the returning Vietnam war veteran who had been turned into a commando super-killer by the military.
In that first film, Rambo was hitchhiking through the Pacific Northwest, headed for his family home in Arizona, when a mean-spirited local police chief (Brian Dennehy) began to harass him as a vagrant with an attitude. After taking all the abuse he could tolerate, Rambo fought back with such ferocity that he soon was the target of an area-wide manhunt that involved several police jurisdictions and the National Guard. Ultimately forced to adopt commando survival tactics in the remote forest country, Rambo kills his pursuers by scores until he finally settles his issues with the local constabulary and moves on.
Morrell had Rambo die at the end of the novel, but "First Blood" was popular enough to force a sequel and, since he was still alive at the end of the first movie, Rambo returned in a huge 1985 box office sequel called "Rambo: First Blood, Part Two," in which he returns to the Far East in a commando effort to free some MIA soldiers still being held captrive in Cambodia. Tricked by his own government into risking his life again, Rambo survives, but is soured on the military he once fought for willingly.
In the second sequel, "Rambo III" (1988), Rambo invades Russian-held Afghanistan to rescue his former commander (Richard Crenna) from a prison fortress, joining with Afghan rebels to defeat the powerful military force of the Soviets. Before being called into duty for that escapade, Rambo was living an anonymous life in the Far East, fighting in hand-to-hand combat in illegal matches with hulking challengers in order to make a buck.
This time around, Rambo has grown so dark and withdrawn so far into himself that he's virtually some kind of Asian monk with an attitude. He owns a motorized sampan and makes a living collecting deadly snakes for fanatics to use in their religious rites and public exhibitions. ("No more cobras," he's told by an angry dealer who wants pythons.) He's done no military-style missions in decades and seems content to simply vanish into the sub-culture, speaking only the local tongues.
Then along comes a USA-based religious order that needs someone to take them up the river so they can minister to victims of the long-running war between the Burmese Army and ethnic rebels. Rambo tersely turns them down. When they try to appeal to his basic humanity, they discover he has disengaged from such feelings. Plainly, Rambo in his 60s is not a player. He wants to be left alone.
Then the only woman in the missionary group (Julie Benz) returns to corner him for one more desperate plea. Nobody else will take them because they fear river pirates and the Burmese Army. They carry no weapons and intend only to help war victims with medicines and food. Rambo looks into her eyes and something clicks inside his dulled-out mind. Perhaps it's because Julie Benz, who plays Dexter's girl friend in the hit "Dexter" TV series, is a drop-dead beautiful woman with an abiding innocence for a persona. Or perhaps her sweet, trusting nature rekindles some dying ember of a soul inside the hulking Rambo.
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 Above, gorgeous Julie Benz from TV's "Dexter," who plays a missionary in "Rambo." At left, Sylvester Stallone as the boatman heading for hell in "Rambo." Was writer-director Stallone dabbling in mythological allegory? |
Whatever the reason, Rambo changes his mind and takes the Christians up river to face the Burmese lions. Almost immediately they're surrounded and about to be killed by pirates. As a demonic pirate leader demands the woman be brought to him and prepares to shoot Rambo, who's piloting the boat, the beast within Rambo suddenly surfaces and the bloodbath begins. In a flash, Rambo has killed all the pirates and the Christians are appalled by what they've just seen. Still determined to go on, though, the missionaries complete their journey and Rambo leaves them ashore, facing what his eyes tell us must be certain death.
As I watched this phase of the movie, seeing the dark, shaggy, scowling and surly Rambo piloting his little boat full of Christians up the riverway to Hell, I couldn't help but wonder if Stallone had been reading up on his Greek mythology or thumbing through Dante's "Inferno" while writing the screenplay. Was he consciously turning his iconic screen hero Rambo into a 21st century version of Charon, who ferried boatloads of dead souls along the river Styx to the dock in Hades?
I wouldn't put it past Stallone, who's not the illiterate his movie roles might lead you to believe he is. If Martin Scorsese, whose films often are chock full of religious imagery, could turn his cabbie hero in "Taxi Driver" into the 1970s version of Charon, why couldn't Sylvester Stallone work such a transformation for John Rambo?
Whatever the "hidden agenda" of "Rambo," the movie is most definitely NOT just an empty-headed action film, but rather at least attempts to use Rambo to focus our attention on the horrifying attrocities being committed against innocent villagers in the state now known as Myomar (Burma). Such places need a Rambo or two--and Stallone's film uses real news footage and some savage filmed sequences to underscore what a hellhole that nation has become.
Naturally, the missionaries are captured by the Army. Most are killed, but several are kept alive to be fed to hungry hogs for the amusement of the guards or. in the case of the only woman among them, to be raped by the multitudes. When the church emissary (Ken Howard) comes to Rambo and asks him to ferry a team of armed mercenaries up the river to rescue the survivors, Rambo knows duty has called again.
Yes, what follows is mayhem carried to the nth degree. It is also as suspenseful and entertaining as hell. Stallone has a thorough command of such action sequences by now and the film moves like a runaway train from the minute he fires the first arrow from his compound bow into the chest of a villain and takes command of the mercenaries in short order.
I believe Stallone wanted to close the curtain dramatically on his two iconic screen characters before he retires from the scene himself. His "Rocky Balboa" last year was a fitting final tribute to that grand Oscar-winning saga and performed quite well at the box office. Was "Rambo" intended to be the coda for John Rambo's career as well?
I'm not certain. Author David Morrell, who no longer has any connection to the movies made from his "First Blood" novel, told me of a script he had seen in which Rambo takes on Ozark mountain men to rescue a female relative in America. That's definitely not what happens in "Rambo." Could that be coming further down the road?
That's uncertain, of course. But the final scene of "Rambo" shows our hero finishing the hitch-hiking journey he began in "First Blood," walking up a long driveway into a sprawling ranch property in the mountains of Americ, going past a battered mailbox with the name "Rambo" on it. In my mind, that could be either a final curtain scene or perhaps the beginning of a fifth chapter in one of the most successful film series of all time.
©2008 by Ron Miller. This column first posted Feb. 25, 2008.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
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