Debbie Schlussel: Weekend Box Office: "Rambo," Outrageous "Untraceable"--Torture Porn Snuff Films As Brought to You by Sly Stallone & Diane Lane; 10 Ways to Torture an FBI Agent to Death
This weekend's box office releases include the much-buzzed about "Rambo" and "Untraceable." I cannot recommend either they are pointless cinematic outings in torture porn and snuff that reach "Saw" levels of graphic violence and dismemberment. Neither is for kids. Not even teens. Adults should know better.
* "Rambo": Like a jilted lover who won't realize it's over, Sylvester Stallone said he wanted to have closure on his Rambo series of movies. Well, sometimes closure is a bad idea. And this is one of those times. His "Rocky Balboa" finish to the "Rocky" series was classy, touching, and inspirational. His "Rambo" finale was better left unmade.
There are only two good things about this movie:
1) It is short, about an hour and twenty minutes.
But even that amount is too long for this non-stop, pointless snuff and dismemberment film. The level of blood, violence, in your face shooting-off of heads, dismemberments, and other graphic gore is at the levels of the movie, "Saw"--perhaps, worse. It is simply disgusting without a purpose. Bodies cut in half, limbs shot off, instant beheadings, etc. Completely unsettling and gross.
2) It shows liberal, leftie American missionaries and how stupid they are in insisting on non-violence against terrorists who are about to kill them. Eventually, they, too, kill terrorists in the interest of self-preservation.
The story: John Rambo is now a snake wrangler in Thailand, collecting cobras and pythons for a snake show. He operates a boat and reluctantly agrees to take foolish, liberal Christian missionaries into a terrorist-dominated area of Burma/Myanmar. The Burmese terrorists capture them and torture them, after they've brutally wiped out a whole town. Members of the missionaries' church hire mercenaries who come to rescue them from the terrorists. Rambo takes them to the area with his boat. The cynical, conceited mercenaries soon learn that they are way out of their league. It is up to Rambo to save the day.
Stallone employs the same technique he used in "Rocky Balboa," as there are flashbacks to the previous "Rambo" movies in this one. A dream sequence, however, engages in the typical "Rambo"-esque revisionist history on Vietnam and Rambo feels guilt over killing "innocent" people there. "You killed for yourself, not for your country," he tells himself. Sorry, but I'm sick of this fairy tale defamation of our brave men who fought and died against the evil VietCong there. Haven't we had enough?
Then, there's the fact that the entire movie shows non-Muslim Asian terrorists engaged in all kinds of torture, rape of boys and women, dismemberment, and murder, all things Muslims engage in, in that region of the world (and others). Yet, Stallone did the PC-thing and use Burmese terrorists instead of Islamic ones. His various excuses for wimping out and not doing so are lame. He's as PC as anyone in Hollywood. That's the real reason.
As I said, one of the best parts is when terrorists approach Rambo and the missionaries on his boat. They want the female missionary handed over. But Rambo kills them all, instead. The male leader of the missionaries screams at him for killing. Rambo tells him, "They would have raped her 50 times over, and they would have cut all your heads off." Later, the male missionary leader threatens to report Rambo for the killings. But, soon, fleeing captivity, this missionary who bragged about not having weapons is shooting Burmese terrorists dead to save himself.
That's great, but not nearly great enough to justify seeing this blood-and-dismemberment fest, which has ample more shock value than any real redeeming value.
* "Untraceable": More like, "Ten Ways to Torture an FBI Agent to Death." Absolutely disgusting and vile. A two-hour long torture porn and snuff film, in which various Americans, including an FBI agent, are tortured to death, televised on the Internet for all of the world to watch--a plot point ripped off from the almost-as-horrid WWE "film," "The Condemned." This movie is extremely graphic and disgusting but is well worth the ten bucks, if you are a psychotic serial murderer looking for new, more sadistic techniques. Shame on Diane Lane for appearing in this sicko-fest. Several people angrily walked out on the screening. Good for them. One woman shouted, "How can you show this torture?"
Lane plays an FBI agent working in the cyber crimes unit. She stumbles onto a site operated by a person who tortures his cat to death and televises it on the internet. Soon, he is torturing people to death on the internet. The more people that watch, the faster they are murdered in sick, disgusting ways, that are all shown very graphically. Lane and her partner try to figure out the identity of the madman mastermind and capture him, but they are racing against time, with each new kill. And now, she and her daughter are the targets.
Absolutely pointless and hypocritical: A movie that pontificates against torture porn on the internet, but serves up the most graphic, disgusting version of it on the silver screen. I can't imagine the FBI likes this kind of silver screen PR. When an FBI agent--or any American--is kidnapped and tortured using one of the novel new methods in this movie, they can thank Diane Lane for it.
In a move of incredible chutzpah, if you go to the URL of the killer's website from the movie, KillWithMe.com, the site tells you that entering the site will result in killing of innocent people. Then, if you enter, it asks you, "Where are your morals?" That's a question the makers of and actors in this movie should be asking themselves, not me or you. It won't be a surprise if innocent people do, indeed, get tortured to death by sickos inspired by this dreck.
Please skip this garbage, and send Hollywood a message.
Posted by Debbie on January 24, 2008 03:42 PM to Debbie Schlussel