The Edmondson Blog

I went to see Rambo in the West End this evening. I'm not sure what to say, except that at £12.15 it cost me 14.4p per minute of film. It's an absolute bloodfest. Even if it doesn't win any Oscars, it should win something for the ingenious ways Rambo manages to kill the bad guys. The dude who added the digitised blood in post-production should be up for a statuette as well.

It's hard to know which my favourite bit was: probably when Rambo shoots an arrow through a soldier's leg, then another through his face, causing him to fall into a river onto a mine and get blown into pieces no bigger than Smarties. Hilarious. Another good bit was a sniper shooting the head clean off a baddie who's been shooting innocent civilians with a high calibre machine gun. The headless body manages to keep shooting at least another five thumping rounds...

There are the usual stereotypes... Americans wanting to do good; ex-British soldiers from the East End of London who have attitude problems; a homosexual Burmese general.

At 84 minutes, there are an average of 2.59 killings per minute. Anything under 90 minutes screams of straight-to-video material. This is no exception.