1.24.2008

Six Degrees of Ripping Off

What do you get if you combine the OC, Karate Kid, Rocky, and Fight Club?

Never Back Down. This movie is described thusly on IMDB:

At his new high school, a rebellious teen (Faris) is lured into an underground fight club, where he finds a mentor in a mixed martial arts veteran (Hounsou).
The trailer I saw last night includes an Ed Norton lookalike, a training montage involving a black man and a white man running with an oceanic backgrop, and lots of exotic kicking. How much you want to bet the white man wins the race in the end, while learning invaluable lessons along the way?

Those of us watching the UFC last night were also treated to a "sneak peek" of the new Rambo, which involved Rambo urging his male and female companions to run, setting up a claymore mine and then running like hell. The bad guys (looking very North Vietnamese but actually Burmese) uncover the claymore at the last second before it explodes, destroying half the jungle (apparently one of those nucular claymores.)

Thankfully, Rambo has the necessary footspeed to outrun the explosion, just like Ahnuld way back in Predator. I couldn't quite hear any maniacal, otherworldly laughter echoing through the jungle, because I was singing along to the soundtrack, Rob Zombie's classic "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor".

Anyhoo, upshot is, I'm disappointed that Rambo is stealing from other 80s action movies besides his own. I was kind of hoping the new Rambo movie would just be a bunch of clips from the previous Rambo movies thrown together, almost like Gus Van Sant's shot for shot remake of Psycho, but different.

1 comment:

Dan said...

I totally agree. Actually, the first few times I saw the commercial I thought they were just re-releasing the original Rambo on the big screen in high def and that's why Stallone looked so busted and old.

New Rambo, old Rambo. How different can it be?

(sigh)

I'll still watch.