Your Worst Nightmare

The original Rambo (actually titled First Blood) is one of my all-time favorite movies. I've seen it more times than I can count. I actually watched it the morning of my wedding to pump me up. The sequels were underappreciated cinematic gems of the Reagan-era 80s. A time when - although I was too young to appreciate at the time - a movie didn't have to feature a complex storyline, computer generated graphics and a gay sidekick to be successful.
So when I heard that Sly Stallone was cooking up Part IV to bookend the series, my attention and curiousity were immediately piqued.
After months of waiting, and quaking with unfettered anticipation, I suffered through endless previews and AMCs 'Silence is Golden' PSA to watch the third sequel in the most beloved movie franchise ever made - Rambo.
By the time I had finished my oil-drum-sized bucket of popcorn and my 239 oz. coke, I bore witness to the final(?) installment of the greatest action series ever to be memorialized on celluloid.
Quick synopsis - Twenty years after laying waste to the Russian forces in Afghanistan by teaming with the insurgent Islamic freedom fighters (probably not the best move politically in hindsight), we find our noble hero wrangling snakes in Thailand. He also does some blacksmithing, but I'm pretty sure that it's just for show. A group of Christian missionaries come calling on the aging warrior to guide them through the Bhurmese wilderness so they can provide aid to villages decimated by the country's 60-year civil war. Rambo, who coincidentally, also 60, reluctantly agrees (he's obviously had some RAMBOtox done). He's a bit ambivalent to their cause. Or should I say RAMBivalent.
The action doesn't get going until the missionaries are attacked and captured and it's up to our guilt-ridden protagonist (and a rag-tag group of monosyllabic mercenaries) to come to their rescue.
The dialogue is laughable, the barely-there plot only exists to facilitate the bullets, and the gore is so over-the-top that it makes Saving Private Ryan look like Driving Miss Daisy.
But it's still awesome.
Why? Because the character is iconic. Stallone's Rambo is a throwback to the days when you knew going in that good was good and evil was toast. From the moment he takes out his Rambow and arrow, those Bhurmese baddies stood no chance. Let the RAMBush begin. They were merely fodder for his hunting knife, his trip-wire claymore, his tree-mounted .50 cal machine gun, and his bare hands (he can use both - he's RAMBidextrous). No one puts bad guys down like John Rambo. Those fools are gonna need a RAMBulance.
Best picture of the year, it is not. A RAMBunctious good time? You bet. A RAMBitious political statement? Nope. A worthy conclusion for a time-honored RAMBassador of justice?
Of course.