Ep# 311: Rambo: Last Blood

[0:00] On this episode we discuss Rambo, Last Blood.

[0:04] The series that once again proves that all you need is a sufficiently angry and armed American to solve any foreign country's problems.

[0:30] Hey, everyone, and welcome to The Flophouse. I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:41] Oh, hey, everyone. It's me, Stuart Wellington.

[0:44] And coming to you live from Los Strangelies, Hollywood, it's Elliot Kalin.

[0:50] But we've got a special guest with us today, don't we, Daniel?

[0:54] yes we do you know him as uh one of the directors of american pie uncredited as imdb says as the

[1:02] director of about a boy one of the writers of uh rogue one a star wars story but most uh flop

[1:09] house listeners will know him as uh the man behind the twilight saga new moon which led him to us

[1:16] today led him to our doorstep yeah you guys left out the colon uh but that's okay it's twilight

[1:22] saga colon new moon and guys i just want to say to all the listeners welcome to the special three

[1:28] hour debate episode in which i defend new moon point by point i think it's just wonderful that

[1:34] you guys now in this time of national crisis are inviting directors to uh to sort of you know

[1:41] really hash things out with you maybe change some minds uh originally this this was going to be like

[1:46] an uva bowls tile uh boxing match where you would take each of us on but because of because of the

[1:52] virus we're just going to do it over over the internet yeah what's the uh what's the order in

[1:56] that that boss fight he has to do who's the uh i'm assuming uh of course i'm first i because i'm the

[2:02] i'm the easiest to take out so i assume you're the glass joe of uh i'm the one where i walk into the

[2:08] ring and trip over the ropes and hurt myself and have to be carried out the thing is like chris is

[2:14] trying to shame us for uh making fun of his movie but like yeah to our to our on our end of things

[2:22] like things worked out great like like you know we uh we made fun of this movie chris wrote us a

[2:27] letter we ended up hanging out with him a few times he took us to dinner uh stewart you know

[2:33] like has seen his house even like it's a i've also seen his house dan i've also seen it i saw it

[2:39] through that drone i was flying over i'm just saying like it's if if he has tried to make us

[2:46] stop uh you know hassling people he has gone about the absolute wrong way because we are being

[2:52] rewarded for our bad behavior that's all something i like to call the long con oh now i've got all

[2:58] three of you in my sights right here you'll see that gas has released into each of your

[3:04] office rooms

[3:06] and you're being abducted and taken to an

[3:09] island where you will be hunted down

[3:10] by the

[3:13] elite who are willing to pay

[3:15] millions. If only

[3:17] some movie or short story had

[3:18] prepared me for that kind of a situation.

[3:20] Dan,

[3:23] did we ever say the name of our guest?

[3:24] Chris Weitz.

[3:25] You know what? I had the same worry.

[3:28] I don't know. We can check the

[3:30] tape later.

[3:32] But I, for one, am really looking forward to this survival hunt that will be going on.

[3:38] Oh, yeah.

[3:39] It'll be fun.

[3:40] I mean, it's not all bad.

[3:41] Yeah, yeah.

[3:41] No, I mean, it's sun, I assume beautiful surroundings, unless this is one of those ones where we

[3:46] go to a burnt out city.

[3:48] It depends on the budget, usually.

[3:51] In all the hunts that I've been on, you want a big whale to really get you into the Maldives

[3:58] or someplace really nice.

[3:59] Otherwise, you're in Chernobyl, then you're dealing with mutants, all kinds of stuff.

[4:03] I mean, or like the Japanese government could fund it to get rid of us.

[4:08] That would be a way to cut down on the Flophouse population.

[4:11] Yes, but then you have to pretend to be misbehaving Japanese school kids first to get into the BR program.

[4:19] I think we could pull it off.

[4:20] I think we could pull it off.

[4:22] I've played enough JRPGs in my time.

[4:25] I know what to do.

[4:28] I've read enough of Cromartie High School.

[4:30] I know what it's like to be like a bad boy in Japan.

[4:32] Okay, so as Dan mentioned, years ago, we covered the underrated, by us, movie.

[4:41] Misunderstood, I think, is the word you're looking for.

[4:43] Misunderstood.

[4:44] And if you want a masterpiece, maybe.

[4:46] It's the movie that's often been called the cornerstone and the archstone of the Twilight Saga.

[4:52] Wow, both stones.

[4:53] Both stones.

[4:54] It's both in the corner and the middle.

[4:57] It turned out Chris was a listener already.

[4:59] It turned out you were a listener, and you wrote us a letter,

[5:01] a very nice letter, handwritten, I remember it being.

[5:04] I have it actually in a place of prominence in my home still.

[5:08] He keeps it under his bed.

[5:10] To ward off demons or witches, which was it, Dan, or both?

[5:16] To ward off snitches, actually.

[5:19] Oh, wow. Okay.

[5:20] He keeps it under there in case there's ever a home invasion situation.

[5:23] He can go hide under his bed, grab it,

[5:26] and then show the home invaders that he's actually really cool.

[5:28] Back off.

[5:30] I know vampires.

[5:31] Well, as I think I may have told you guys,

[5:33] I don't think it was in my letter, but, you know,

[5:36] well, I think it was a bit,

[5:37] that I listened with great glee to the Flophouse for a long time.

[5:42] And I told a friend of mine about it.

[5:45] I said, oh, you've got to check this out.

[5:46] And then he called back a couple of days later and said,

[5:48] have you heard all of the episodes?

[5:50] And I said, no, why would you say that?

[5:52] And then it turned out that I was hoist by my own podcast, Petard.

[5:57] And then I had a real dilemma in my life, which was, was I going to listen to the episode?

[6:02] Was I going to submit myself to the treatments that I had submitted others to, to enjoy their shellacking at your guys' hands?

[6:12] And I'm glad I did.

[6:13] And I'm glad that we find ourselves here.

[6:16] And, you know, I think that we all have to try to do things to unite the country at this point.

[6:22] And hey, listen, this may not be such a big deal, but for a bad movie podcast and a director whose movie was mocked, if they can get together, why can't China release accurate statistics about the COVID virus?

[6:39] If we could reach across the aisle from creators like you to leeches like us who merely criticize other people's work, everybody can, right?

[6:49] Before I claimed that I didn't feel guilty, but now Chris's unfailing kindness and gentlemanly attitude has made me feel a little guilty.

[6:57] I should have listened to the episode again before we recorded because I forgot what we said.

[7:02] It's okay.

[7:02] I have it fresh in my mind.

[7:04] I listen to it every morning as I get psyched up, and I prepare my murder tunnels for when I tempt you guys to come over.

[7:14] I've got all these special kind of spike traps and explosives and things.

[7:18] You listen to it while you're, like, dunking your tar-covered fist wraps in, like, broken glass and gummy bears and whatnot.

[7:26] Okay, that was a perfect segue into our movie, and then Stuart turned into a joke about Hot Shots Part Deux, I think.

[7:32] Oh, I'm going to talk a lot about that.

[7:34] So, but let's talk about, Dan, what do we do on this podcast other than get hoist on our own petard?

[7:42] And although it strikes me that this is like the sequel to an O'Henry, like a 21st century O'Henry story, like the 21st century O'Henry story would be like, I love this podcast where they make fun of movies.

[7:52] They're making fun of my movie.

[7:54] And then the sequel would be where we're like, hey, we can make fun of whoever we want.

[7:58] Oh, he's here.

[7:59] Oh, no.

[7:59] And then I guess there would be a third one for a trilogy.

[8:02] I don't know what would happen then.

[8:03] That's where I shave my head to buy you guys a microphone and you send me a comb to put in my beautiful hair.

[8:12] that's what it is and weirdly enough you've managed to turn us into walrus men by the end

[8:17] yeah i forgot oh henry has had a story by credit on tusk i'm glad you went uh way classier elliot

[8:26] and not the um saturday night live thing that you hate where someone is making fun of some

[8:31] other celebrity and then it's like oh here they are the real celebrity oh boy right behind them

[8:37] not a fan of that not a fan of it at all but anyway so dan what are we doing this podcast

[8:42] This is a podcast where we watch a bad movie.

[8:44] Like Twilight, New Moon.

[8:47] I was actually going to say, and boy, howdy.

[8:50] This time we watched something so much, so, so much.

[8:56] Like Twilight, New Moon is a new classic.

[8:58] I would watch a million Twilight, New Moons before watching this movie again.

[9:02] I wouldn't do that.

[9:03] Maybe a thousand.

[9:06] And what movie did we watch, Dan, as if it wasn't announced in the beginning?

[9:10] Rambo Last Blood

[9:12] The last in the Rambo

[9:15] Let me give you guys a little insight

[9:17] A little Hollywood insight here

[9:18] A little inside baseball

[9:20] You probably don't know this

[9:23] But when you put last or final

[9:25] In the title of your movie

[9:26] You're actually not legally allowed to make any more movies

[9:28] In that franchise

[9:29] Whenever someone does that

[9:32] That means they're going to leave it all out on the floor

[9:34] They're going to absolutely do their very best

[9:36] To make it the best film in the series

[9:37] Like Final Destination

[9:39] Yeah.

[9:40] When they made Rise of Skywalker, that tripped the trap because they'd already made Last Jedi.

[9:46] And so they made Rise of Skywalker and the system was like, this isn't going to work out.

[9:50] You're trying to break the rules.

[9:51] Yeah.

[9:52] When they made Freddy's Dead, they never made any more Nightmare on Elm Street movies after that.

[9:57] And Jason went to hell and didn't come back.

[9:58] Perfect example is The Last Emperor.

[10:01] There was never a sequel to that.

[10:02] That's true.

[10:04] Not even a, where's the prequel?

[10:06] The First Emperor.

[10:07] I pitched Save the Last Dance 2, but they said they couldn't make it legally, so I'm

[10:12] like, okay.

[10:13] Yeah, it had to be Save the Penultimate Dance.

[10:15] You have to start going further back.

[10:17] Well, that happened to me with The Last of Sheol and New Moon, and it just couldn't get

[10:24] off the ground.

[10:24] Yeah, so this is...

[10:28] Elliot, you have a particular connection to the Rambo character, do you not?

[10:34] I don't know if I would say connection.

[10:36] He's a character that I find fascinating because he is such a blatant fantasy figure.

[10:42] But also, if ever there was a character that went so far afield of its original intention where the first movie is about a man haunted by a war he was in who is mistreated by people who think he's a freak now and he goes on a rampage.

[10:57] And the next every other movie in the series is like, remember when he was blowing stuff up?

[11:02] Wasn't that amazing?

[11:03] And so by this movie, he's just like an unstoppable killing machine.

[11:07] Let's just take all the best parts and make a movie out of it.

[11:10] And the movie, even this movie sort of like pays like perfunctory like lip service to the idea like, oh, like war like ruins a man.

[11:20] Like I can't see anything good in the world anymore, you know.

[11:23] But that's all just in the service of making him like a more awesome, unstoppable killing machine in the mind of this film.

[11:31] Yeah. Well, this movie, it has the weird thing of feeling like Rambo fan fiction that they somehow got Sylvester Stallone to do. Like the character feels so a little off of, off normal. And also the story is so not a Ram, it's like real death wish of a story and not a, not a Rambo story because Rambo stories are usually, I mean, the first one again, he's, he's a drifter. He gets bullied and he kills a lot of people in Rambo's two through four. It's like Rambo. There's a problem only a Rambo can solve.

[12:00] we gotta drop Rambo in and Rambo's like

[12:02] you got it I'm gonna team up with the Mujahideen

[12:04] this isn't gonna

[12:05] get any backfire on us this is gonna be great

[12:08] and in this one it's like

[12:11] it's just an out and out revenge

[12:13] story that has a little gloss of

[12:14] foreign interventionism in it

[12:16] yeah and I've been trying to

[12:19] remember to do this when I can

[12:21] just like a little content warning

[12:23] I don't think we're gonna get deep into it

[12:24] I hope not but like there is

[12:27] there is rape

[12:28] in this movie there is a lot of uh xenophobia uh just be aware yeah and with the thing is the movie

[12:36] didn't have to be that way we'll get into how no not at all we'll get into how ugly this film is

[12:41] but so rambo this rambo was gestating for a long time uh at little which is adorable to me the idea

[12:47] of a little rambo baby just waiting to be born and he's like oh do we do we get to be born this time

[12:52] and that kind of stuff yeah ram baby dan did i actually dan i did i do have a connection with

[12:57] rambo did i ever tell you guys about i must have at some point my the bushbow series of videos that

[13:01] i did when i was a kid no but i was thinking about how you would do the rambo room ramble room

[13:06] thing so actually i have it so when i was a when i was an adolescent me and a friend of mine he had

[13:11] a george bush senior mask because george bush jr didn't exist yet and george bush senior mask and

[13:17] we made a series of videos existed i mean yeah i guess technically uh i thought he sprang out of

[13:24] his father's head fully formed uh right before the 2000 election forest stewart does he make a sound

[13:30] you'll be probably because he's like he's in the forest cutting down trees with a chainsaw

[13:35] or he goes ow ow owie ow ow yeah because that's what he sounds like um when my friend adam and i

[13:43] he had a george bush mask and so right after the 1992 election when i was about uh 11 i guess uh

[13:50] we made a series of videos called Bushbow where George Bush was so mad about

[13:54] losing the election that he became a vigilante and was fighting crime.

[13:57] And fast forward to when I would do one man shows,

[14:01] kind of one man shows in New York.

[14:03] And I had a bit called the ramble room where I would reveal my, uh, how,

[14:08] you know, my biggest fears and anxieties.

[14:10] And then to overcome the shame I felt from that,

[14:14] I would then enter the Rambo room,

[14:15] which was just me pretending to be Rambo and doing a kind of mangled version of

[14:19] the monologue from the end of the first movie where he's like oh my friend he was getting a

[14:23] shoeshine and they blew his shoes up and oh then they came back and they spit on us to call us

[14:27] baby killers and crap and uh so yeah i mean i've always been fascinated by sylvester stallone but

[14:32] he's also i mean sylvester stallone occasionally stops by the the studio doesn't he like i mean

[14:38] these guys tell me but i've never been here when it happens that's the thing you missed it it's

[14:42] been pretty great uh i wanted i was hoping to find out how he's doing with his soft heart disease

[14:48] whether that's a pre-existing condition

[14:52] especially now that increases his health risk

[14:54] the fact that his heart is soft like a cheese

[14:56] I think he said at one point

[14:57] and his love of Tostitos

[15:00] I wonder how that might have played into

[15:01] some of the locations of this movie

[15:05] and you brought up the first Rambo movie

[15:10] First Blood

[15:11] which starred Brian Dennehy, R.I.P.

[15:14] that's true, who just passed away this week

[15:16] So this is a really timely time.

[15:18] We're talking about Rambo last play.

[15:20] It is a timeless time.

[15:21] But I did some research, and it turns out that they've been working on it.

[15:24] So this Rambo movie had been gestating for a long time.

[15:26] At one point, it was called Rambo the Savage Hunt,

[15:29] and it was going to be about him leading a team of hunters

[15:32] to find a genetically modified kind of half-human creature.

[15:36] And it's like, why didn't they make that movie?

[15:38] It also would not have felt like a Rambo movie.

[15:40] That would have been the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull of Rambo movies,

[15:43] but I would have loved it so much more.

[15:44] Instead, that's the attitude that the movie takes towards Mexicans.

[15:47] Yes, instead they treat Mexicans as half-human creatures.

[15:49] Genetically modified freaks.

[15:51] And at some point, he teamed up Sylvester Sly, I call him.

[15:55] I've never met him, but he's Sly like a fox.

[15:57] Sly teamed up with Rambo's creator, David Morrell,

[16:01] and they were going to make what Wikipedia just quotes Sylvester Stallone as saying

[16:05] it was going to be a soulful journey for John Rambo,

[16:07] but the producer said, no, we want to do this human trafficking story.

[16:10] So I guess Sylvester Stallone just said, okay, fine, I don't care.

[16:14] Well, at least the story you're describing plays on the themes of the Rambo character.

[16:24] Yes, which is a man who can only express his post-traumatic stress disorder from war by just mowing down people.

[16:32] There's the scenes at the end of the last Rambo movie, which was just called Rambo.

[16:37] Rambo Balboa?

[16:39] Yes, called Rambo Balboa.

[16:42] By the way, Elliot, I think that you and I saw Rambo together, right?

[16:44] I think we might have, yeah.

[16:46] That was one of the first, like, early in our friendship.

[16:48] And that movie also has some xenophobic elements, but it's so much more fun because it, like, eschews, like, just destroying the female lead, as this movie does.

[17:02] It does not do that.

[17:03] And it is so absurdly violent.

[17:05] Yo, there's a part at the end where Rambo is just standing with a huge machine gun, with a truck-mounted machine gun.

[17:12] just tearing apart wave after wave of enemy Burmese soldiers running after him.

[17:17] And he gets shot in the shoulder, and he just keeps mowing them down,

[17:20] and he just runs out of bad guys to shoot.

[17:22] Like, that's just how it ends.

[17:23] It ends with him running out of bad guys.

[17:25] And then he's just standing there looking with his hand on his shoulder,

[17:28] and for the life of me, it looked like they had shaved a bear

[17:31] and put a T-shirt on him and just had him stand there.

[17:34] There's a part in that movie where he is sneaking around the enemy camp

[17:39] and he's like

[17:39] under a bridge

[17:40] and it looks like

[17:41] the Frankenstein monster

[17:42] escaped

[17:43] like that was when

[17:43] Sly was really

[17:44] HGHing it up

[17:45] yeah

[17:46] the storyboards

[17:47] were by Bernie Wrightson

[17:48] he doesn't

[17:51] he doesn't look

[17:51] exactly small here

[17:53] he's still pretty

[17:54] no no

[17:54] but he's

[17:55] that's why

[17:55] at the end

[17:55] at their occasionally moments

[17:57] especially at the end credits

[17:58] they show you scenes

[17:59] from First Blood

[17:59] and he looks like

[18:00] a normal

[18:00] relatively normal

[18:02] human being

[18:02] and the thing that

[18:03] the scenes from First Blood

[18:04] really brought home to me

[18:05] is like

[18:05] he's always had

[18:06] kind of beautiful eyes

[18:07] these like big doe eyes

[18:09] for like a tough guy and so in the past he's been able to be kind of like a somewhat emotionally

[18:15] wounded tough guy but in this one he's just it's just logan unforgiven you know stuff but we'll

[18:21] get to that so the foreign version of this movie begins with john rambo saving a missing hiker from

[18:26] a flood and that triggers his ptsd we don't get to see that scene in the american version of it

[18:31] so i don't know i i had the choice on amazon prime between the extended cut

[18:36] and the release version.

[18:38] I said, I'm going to see the one

[18:39] that they thought was good enough

[18:40] to put in theaters.

[18:41] And oh boy.

[18:42] So we know why.

[18:43] So the movie starts

[18:44] at the end of the last Rambo.

[18:46] John Rambo went back

[18:47] to his family's farm.

[18:48] It seemed like he had

[18:49] turned over a new leaf.

[18:50] And you know what?

[18:50] It seems like he has.

[18:51] He's been living on this farm.

[18:52] He's retired.

[18:53] Does he have a room full

[18:54] of his favorite weapons?

[18:55] Sure.

[18:56] Does he have a network

[18:57] of underground tunnels

[18:58] under his farm

[18:59] that are very easily trappable?

[19:01] Yes, of course.

[19:02] But who doesn't in this day and age?

[19:04] He uses them for parties for kids.

[19:06] Yeah, yeah.

[19:07] And this, the walls are covered in knickknacks

[19:10] to like a TGI Friday's level.

[19:12] It's like a Rambo TGI Friday's

[19:14] where it's like, there's the bow and arrow.

[19:16] There's that knife.

[19:17] There's the machete from the last one.

[19:19] Like there's a license plate that just says our bow.

[19:22] He does spend a lot of time in his tunnels

[19:26] blacksmithing weapons.

[19:28] But you get the sense that that's his necessary therapy.

[19:33] He can channel all his paranoid rage into that, and otherwise he's a nice rancher.

[19:39] So he's got these two women in his life.

[19:43] Were they in a previous Rambo movie?

[19:46] No, these are new characters.

[19:49] I mean, the last Rambo movie was 15 years ago, I think, something like that.

[19:53] The last one was in, let's see, 2008, so it was 12 years ago.

[19:58] So, during that time, he has picked up a niece, Gabriela, and a housekeeper?

[20:06] She's related to Gabriela in some way, but she's not her mother.

[20:09] She's maybe Gabriela's grandmother.

[20:11] She's not Sylvester Stallone's love interest.

[20:14] I kept waiting for them to reveal that Sylvester Stallone was in love with this woman, and it just wasn't happening.

[20:19] Wikipedia, for what it's worth, identifies her as, like, she and Rambo manage the ranch together, and she is the young woman's grandmother.

[20:36] Okay.

[20:37] And I think uncle may be just sort of a, like, honorific.

[20:41] I don't know if they're actually related.

[20:43] I assumed that she was the daughter of his sister.

[20:49] It made me wonder what ethnicity the name Rambo is.

[20:53] Is it like, you know, or is it just...

[20:56] I mean, it was supposed to be Italian, I assume.

[20:58] Rambo.

[20:59] When they came to Ellis Island, it was Rambolini.

[21:02] And they said, well, you've got to change it a little bit.

[21:05] Change it to something much more Anglo-Saxon sounding like Rambo.

[21:11] Gabriella's, like, about to go to college, and she has a great moment where she asks Rambo,

[21:17] did you like being a soldier?

[21:19] And I'm like, uh, I don't think he did.

[21:22] That's a complicated question.

[21:23] Yeah, if there's one thing she should have learned in the past 10 years.

[21:26] It's that being a soldier kind of wrecked him.

[21:29] It's not like he doesn't pretty much every 10 minutes talk about how terrible everything was

[21:33] and how there's no humanity left in him.

[21:35] But I want to say about the actors, the supporting actors in this first bit,

[21:41] that they're really doing their best with not too much.

[21:44] They are not bad.

[21:45] And especially, I think, the young girl, Gabriela,

[21:48] there are moments where she is in this kind of insane revenge plot

[21:52] and actually seems like a 17-year-old girl might be in that scenario.

[21:58] I would also argue that Stallone is doing the best he can with what he's given.

[22:04] He seems like a genuinely wounded man who has a lot of rage.

[22:10] The movie, the movie around these actors is the problem.

[22:13] But yes, he sort of learned how to be quiet and just be himself, which which is kind of great.

[22:18] And actually, I would have watched the two hour movie of them hanging out at the farm and just dealing with normal stuff much more happily than what happened.

[22:27] There is a great Rambo movie that is exactly that, which is him and Gabriella like training for like a big horse competition because they tame horse.

[22:36] They train horses at the ranch or like just like existing at the ranch and her trying to get him to reveal to her the things that he's never revealed before about himself.

[22:45] Like there's a really I would love to like that's the movie they should have made and it would have cost a lot less.

[22:50] But then you wouldn't have scenes of guys getting rakes through their head.

[22:53] So like I guess.

[22:54] Well, you could probably find a place for that.

[22:58] I guess so.

[23:00] Where Rambo just kills a bunch of randos.

[23:02] Rambo's randos.

[23:04] It's called Rambo rando blood.

[23:06] it's called rando rambo five and and he's still dealing with his trauma obviously uh he's making

[23:14] gabriella a letter opener that looks like a knife and i kept waiting for that to be like the big

[23:19] revenge weapon at the end but i don't i don't think it was used a much bigger you could have

[23:23] said there's a letter it's for you or something like that that could have been a great catchphrase

[23:28] i thought he i thought he's decapitated and they cut someone's head off yeah i thought he

[23:32] He stuck it in the one brother's chest with her picture before he chopped off his head.

[23:36] Oh, was that what he did?

[23:36] Yeah, maybe that's what it was.

[23:38] Oh, yes.

[23:38] Because he mentioned nothing is not paid off.

[23:40] Everything is set up and paid off.

[23:41] We'll get to that.

[23:42] Oh, well, yeah, actually, Stuart, if I could, I've got to bump in on this Skype call.

[23:48] I had to bump Elliot off the call.

[23:50] It sounded like Columbo was bumping in before you, Stallone.

[23:53] Well, that's my new character, Carambo.

[23:55] Oh, okay.

[23:56] He's like Columbo.

[23:57] So he's like, one more thing, you're dead.

[23:58] And then he shoots somebody.

[24:00] He's like, hey, did you leave these POWs behind?

[24:04] And they're like, yeah.

[24:05] No, no, I didn't.

[24:05] He's like, oh, yeah, that makes sense.

[24:07] That makes sense.

[24:07] One more question.

[24:08] Can I kill you?

[24:09] And then I shoot him.

[24:09] Do they say yes, or do you just shoot them no matter what they—

[24:15] It doesn't really matter what they're going to say.

[24:17] I'm just going to do it anyway.

[24:18] So the thing is, this is kind of like an intricate puzzle box of a film.

[24:23] And so everything introduced in the beginning comes around.

[24:26] It's like Anton Chekhov said, if you introduce a letter opener at the beginning,

[24:30] then you've got to use it to stab the photo of your dead niece

[24:33] to a decapitated drug dealer's body in Act 3.

[24:36] And so the thing that I want you to remember

[24:40] while you're talking about this movie, Rambo, Last Blood,

[24:42] is that the subtext, which unfortunately was cut out of the American cut,

[24:47] is that Rambo only has so much blood left in his body.

[24:50] Because, as you may remember,

[24:52] the blood in my body is thicker than normal human blood.

[24:54] Right. So that's why the veins in your arms are so pronounced?

[24:59] Is it just like they're enlarged to let the blood go through?

[25:01] Not in, I mean, it's just naturally, it's blood that is the consistency of, you know, like audio cable.

[25:08] Just going through my veins, you know, just like pushing a pipe cleaner through a noodle, you know, basically.

[25:15] So just remember that that was a whole subplot that a lot of the movie makes more sense about.

[25:21] If you remember that, that there's, you know, there was supposed to be a counter on screen at all times that counted how many drops of blood were left in my body.

[25:30] And I don't know who screwed up in post, but for some reason that wasn't there.

[25:34] I didn't find out until the premiere.

[25:36] And I'm like, well, when does the counter go up?

[25:38] Because it's kind of what the movie is about is he doesn't have so much blood left and it never happens.

[25:42] You know, like a crank situation where he's got to keep, you know, his heart rate up.

[25:46] No, that would be worse.

[25:48] You want the heart rate to go down so the blood doesn't get pumped out of the body.

[25:51] Because that's the other thing.

[25:52] Earlier in the film, I was supposed to get shot, like that one gremlin who gets shot,

[25:57] and then he drinks the potion, and then all the stuff comes out of him.

[26:00] That's what's going to happen.

[26:01] So it's leaking out of me the whole time, like a sprinkler.

[26:03] So, I mean, if it was moving faster, I'd lose the blood faster.

[26:06] So I guess what I'm saying is this was not my ideal vision of the film, Rambo Last Blood.

[26:10] But, you know, maybe I'll have some more answers for you later in the show.

[26:14] Gotta go, digital jetpack.

[26:15] Digital jetpack.

[26:17] Guys, I'm sorry.

[26:18] I was having, I guess, some trouble with the internet, and I couldn't get back on the Skype call.

[26:21] Everything okay?

[26:22] Did I miss anything?

[26:23] Yeah.

[26:24] Everything's great.

[26:26] Okay.

[26:28] Okay, so Gabriela, she invites some friends over for a going-off-to-college party in Sly's secret murder tunnels.

[26:36] Yeah, he shows them the tunnels.

[26:37] Shows them the tunnels, and her friend Giselle calls and says,

[26:42] I found your dad who abandoned you.

[26:44] He's in Mexico.

[26:45] Do you want to come meet him?

[26:47] and uh sly is like your dad's a bad man he and uh and she's like you know i don't you don't know

[26:53] about my world and he's like yeah i do it's worse than mine and it was like whoa whoa hold on a

[26:57] second like that's a big claim rambo has like such a bleak view of the world and humanity he's like

[27:04] he like this this whole monologue is basically basically like everyone's got a black heart like

[27:09] like like there's no goodness in the world in his and that's when like he sequestered

[27:14] his world is so dark that he thinks that that a murder tunnel is a is a good place to invite

[27:20] teenagers to have a party and i was gonna say dan i was gonna say dan we all know from bruce

[27:25] springsteen that everybody has a hungry heart so yeah yeah or a soft heart but like but um

[27:30] no but it's funny because movies like this like the the hero expresses this like bleak view of

[27:36] humanity and then the whole arc of the movie is that is confirmed yes like well he's like oh no

[27:42] no no no he was right the whole time she shouldn't like be like believe that there's good in the

[27:47] world no because everyone's like rambo a crazy hermit man who sets up like devices to murder

[27:55] people i mean it's better than being a crazy hermit crab yeah if i mean if if his if his

[28:01] dark vision weren't realized however we wouldn't be able to enjoy this film you know thank god

[28:08] that the world is such a terrible place

[28:10] that Rambo has to kill maybe 2,000 people

[28:14] by the end of the movie?

[28:16] Certainly a lot of people.

[28:16] A lot of people, especially for a man his age.

[28:18] Gabrielle reveals to her grandmother and to Rambo

[28:24] that she wants to go track down her father.

[28:26] And Rambo's like, he's a terrible man.

[28:30] And at first I'm like, oh, that's what any guy

[28:33] with a lot of baggage and fucked up relationships

[28:35] and a terrible worldview, that's what he would say.

[28:37] Luckily, that gets paid off later on when we find out he is the worst person I've ever met.

[28:42] Oh, but he's not as bad as some of the other guys.

[28:45] They're terrible.

[28:45] Also, he doesn't have a cell phone.

[28:47] You can't call ahead of time to talk to him and save yourself the enslavement.

[28:54] Well, as we'll see soon, so she goes anyway.

[28:59] She decides she's going to go.

[29:00] She goes to Mexico, which is a short drive from the ranch.

[29:03] I guess they live near the border.

[29:05] And it's like she crosses the border and she is instantly in a burnt-out war zone.

[29:09] That is, none of the houses seem to have roofs.

[29:12] People are just gangbangers hanging out, drinking on car hoods.

[29:16] It's like a reverse Wizard of Oz.

[29:18] It's crazy how instantly she's just in some Italian Mad Max ripoff movie version of a city

[29:25] where it's just burnt-out buildings and shells of vehicles.

[29:29] It is pretty amazing.

[29:30] So I'm going to get real and political for a moment here, guys.

[29:34] Okay.

[29:35] That's what we're here for. The Flophouse is nothing but a format for, you know, bold political controversy.

[29:40] Being a part Mexican myself, you know, having gone there when I was a kid and having made movies with actual Mexican people in them.

[29:49] It's really interesting to see this sort of trope of Mexico, like as though once you deploy the word Mexico, you know, she says, I want to go to Mexico.

[29:55] And Rambo is immediately like, whoa, why would you want to do that?

[29:58] Although, you know, about 100 million Mexican people actually live in Mexico and most of them aren't.

[30:05] um ar-15 wielding narco murderers um but you would think from the way that this movie portrays

[30:10] it as elliot said at the moment you step across that border all bets are off and you're probably

[30:15] going to die it reminds me of everything becomes ochre tinted one of my one yeah is that well it's

[30:22] like yeah even the light looks terrible there that they one of my uh one of my friends freshman

[30:27] year of college was uh she was from mexico and she would talk then about how like she hated how

[30:33] in american movies if you had committed a crime you would just escape to mexico and she's like

[30:38] we have police officers in mexico like you can't it's not like you just go there and crime is okay

[30:43] like i think she was especially mad because her dad had been attorney general of mexico for a

[30:47] little bit so it was it was a personal insult well i i want to take a moment here uh as long

[30:52] as this topic to defend the movie's vision of mexico uh i didn't hear what you said but it's

[30:57] on on topic so i assume that um so like i'm gonna compare this movie to its closest relative uh

[31:04] taken a few times during our discussion here and the thing that taken does with this is like taken

[31:10] is also a xenophobic movie but oh i thought the i thought the name of the movie was taken a few

[31:15] times which i thought would be like a late late that's the one where liam neeson is like daughter

[31:20] please stop talking to strangers this is the third time today that you've been taken yeah anyway

[31:27] taken is a much superior version of this story and it makes a few key decisions uh one of which

[31:34] is it is still xenophobic but it decides to aim at xenophobia at least at a place that is

[31:42] not historically um uh vilified by america um uh which is which makes it weird in a different way

[31:52] like you watch taken you're like okay why is liam neeson immediately terrified his daughter wants

[31:57] to go to paris like that that seems very crazy when you watch the movie but like you put it off

[32:04] to him just being like insane uh he's seen so much in the cia or whatever but like apparently the

[32:11] paris have taken is filled with sex slavers well we won't touch on that but but at least it's like

[32:15] making an attempt to be like okay so we don't want to inflame any actual racial tensions that exist

[32:23] in america whereas rambo last blood is like okay well at right when we're building this wall let's

[32:30] uh make mexicans the bad guy yeah and i mean so the the what's supposed to counter away this is

[32:36] that there is a nice Mexican

[32:38] grandmother and a Mexican

[32:40] American girl in it and so this sort of

[32:41] excuses the

[32:43] rampant xenophobia but it

[32:46] doesn't exactly oh by the way Sebastian

[32:48] reports that the movie should have

[32:50] been called Rambo Red Cross or Rambo

[32:52] Remaining Blood just needed to get

[32:54] that in because I'm getting

[32:55] notes submitted to me

[32:57] I think so I think the movie

[33:00] is so the movie is not saying

[33:01] Mexicans are bad the movie is saying

[33:04] Mexican men and most

[33:06] mexican women are bad and i feel like that's the kind of nuanced message that we it's refreshing

[33:11] from a rambo movie where usually everyone in the foreign country except the one woman who likes

[33:15] rambo is bad uh but it is yeah it's it's the movie exists in that weird fantasy world of fear that so

[33:23] many people live in where they're like ms-13 is going to come get us and it's like i don't think

[33:27] so like they have no interest in you i don't know why why do you think they're just a marauding band

[33:32] of scavengers or reavers that just wanders

[33:34] the countryside. Well, it's only really if you do

[33:36] something stupid, like try to make contact

[33:38] with your father.

[33:39] It's clearly dangerous

[33:42] to do. Or trust Giselle, because as we

[33:44] meet Giselle, we know she is trouble,

[33:46] because she's got heavy makeup and

[33:48] jewelry and things like that.

[33:49] She is dressed very cleanly

[33:52] as a, in like

[33:54] traditional gangbanger tropes. All she's

[33:56] missing is a few SoundCloud rapper

[33:57] facial tattoos, but

[34:00] like, all of her clothes

[34:02] are like pristine like clear like i don't know it feels like a high school play version like

[34:07] like in rushmore or something when they're dressed up as as like gangbangers like everything is very

[34:12] clean and carefully manicured yeah she looks like she's doing well for herself even though she moved

[34:18] back to mexico she's wearing los angeles kind of uh stereotype chola uh outfits and it seems a bit

[34:25] unrealistic to me but hey she's got to do she's got to do her she's hey she's got to be herself

[34:31] you know she's as much an outsider as as gabriella giselle immediately asked gabriella if she's a

[34:35] virgin and then goes hey i'm just joking and it's like i don't think that was a joke this is gonna

[34:40] be trouble gabrielle goes to meet her dad manuel who says hey i left you because i never wanted you

[34:46] so goodbye and then closes the door he makes the most comical heel turn because when he first

[34:52] opens the door like he's not warm to her but he's like oh hey it's been a while like you know he

[34:57] he is at least... Oh, because you know what

[34:59] happened? I think he didn't recognize her at first

[35:01] and thought she was someone from work.

[35:02] And he was like, oh, hey, what are you doing here?

[35:05] It's nice to see you. And she's like, why did you leave my family?

[35:07] He's like, oh, it's my daughter. Get out of here. I don't want to talk to you.

[35:09] There's a... He steps out

[35:11] of the light into shadow in order

[35:13] to be mean.

[35:15] Also. Yeah.

[35:16] His eyes go dead. And his

[35:19] new wife answers the door and she's

[35:21] like, who is she?

[35:23] I'll explain later. And she's like,

[35:25] okay, and leaves.

[35:27] what but yeah they've got a great relationship they trust each other that's that's i think what

[35:33] they're trying to say is that he's moved on and he's actually kind of made something of himself

[35:37] and why is she coming to wreck his life where he's got this really trusting relationship with

[35:41] his wife he's like you're a reminder of the bad man i used to be and not the caring family man

[35:45] that i am now so i want you out of here this movie is so committed to like a rote shorthand

[35:51] that he he like literally just says like one day i looked at you and your mom and i'm like

[35:56] i don't care about these people and i left i don't like go away i don't want you like he's

[36:01] the most direct about being a bad father as anyone could be i wonder if maybe he's harry

[36:08] and the hendersoning her and he knows that he's a dangerous man and he doesn't want her to be in

[36:12] trouble so he's like you stink i don't like you i never liked you get out of here honestly elliot

[36:17] he is so over the top here that i thought it was going to be a plot point like that i thought he

[36:23] who's trying to scare her away.

[36:24] Or it was a dream or something.

[36:26] Yeah.

[36:27] So she's really depressed about this,

[36:31] so Giselle, to cheer her up, takes her to a club,

[36:33] which actually looked like a pretty normal club.

[36:35] It looked pretty fun, yeah.

[36:36] Yeah, it looked like a fun place to be.

[36:37] Her drink gets spiked.

[36:39] I guess it's not so fun after all.

[36:40] Next day, everyone's like,

[36:43] Gabrielle's disappeared.

[36:44] Where is she?

[36:44] And she went to Mexico,

[36:46] and Rambo's like,

[36:47] I gotta go get her.

[36:48] And he gets in his truck and races over to Mexico.

[36:51] This is where the trigger warnings are going to have to come in because Gabri, as they call her, is instantly the prisoner of a nightmarish hell pimp who says he'll kill any of his women if they run away.

[37:04] And she's inside of the filthiest building I've ever seen in my life in a movie.

[37:08] And it's like she – the movie is trying to outdo itself in being unpleasant and horrible.

[37:17] And this is where it really starts getting into that, what I guess you'd call the Act 2 slime.

[37:21] How did you guys feel about it?

[37:25] Maybe I'm off base.

[37:25] It's really tricky because, I mean, terrible things are happening to young women in Mexico.

[37:30] And, you know, sometimes this has been addressed in movies before, but it's rarely been used as such a blatant kind of plot engine purely to manufacture bad guys to be destroyed by Sylvester Stallone.

[37:45] So it's weird and unsettling.

[37:48] I feel like they go after this, the tragedies that can befall young women in Mexico, with not quite as much sensitivity as Roberto Bolaño in 2666.

[37:58] Just not quite as much.

[38:00] I was going to quote 2666, but I thought, no, you know, I'm not going to try to bring a sort of literary fiction into it.

[38:10] But hey, this is great.

[38:11] Hey, come on.

[38:12] It's got to be done.

[38:13] but it reminded when when the last rainbow came out it was like i felt the same way about how it

[38:18] was set in um in burma or i always mix up whether it's called burma or myanmar now and i feel

[38:23] terrible about that but the it was set there and it was at the time that it was still a the military

[38:28] dictatorship before it became a democracy and that's kind of becoming a dictatorship again but

[38:32] but at the time it was still a military dictatorship and i was like it's terrible that

[38:35] they're using it just as fodder for these movies but at the same time like what other american

[38:39] movies are talking about what's going on in that part of the world like none of them were

[38:43] so it feels weird for

[38:45] I think this movie is probably

[38:47] like actually you know what never mind

[38:49] I don't think it's trying to call attention to any of this it's just like

[38:51] what's a part of the world that sounds really terrible

[38:53] and we can have something horrible happen

[38:55] I would like I have some things

[38:57] to say about that like so

[38:59] again Taken so

[39:01] in Taken so is again

[39:03] Taken the sequel yeah

[39:04] where not only where Liam Neeson has

[39:07] to team up with Judd Hersh as his Jewish father

[39:09] and he's like again Taken

[39:10] Yeah, and then there's the Taken DA, where he magically turns into a district attorney.

[39:16] Magically, he ran for the office.

[39:20] He was elected to it.

[39:21] Oh, okay.

[39:21] The thing about this is, like, so in Taken, the daughter's also being sex trafficked.

[39:30] but the movie has at least the small decency to rescue her before uh before any rape occurs

[39:41] whereas this movie seems to delight in having this uh uh surrogate daughter character be

[39:48] as brutally mistreated as possible well yeah it takes a bit of a mel gibson kind of direction

[39:55] where where sylvester stallone or rather rambo strangely sort of offers himself up like

[40:00] this guy who who is uh you know an incredibly skilled stealthy assassin allows himself to be

[40:07] beaten up basically by 50 dudes uh and at the same time as that's happening his his surrogate

[40:14] daughter whatever is is being raped and and and it's not necessary to the plot for this to happen

[40:19] no and i think that like we we've identified the xenophobia of the movie like every review of the

[40:28] movie at the time identified that but i don't think there's as much talk about like the sexism

[40:33] of the movie because number one she is like so fridged in the sense that like her she only exists

[40:42] in the movie in relation to rambo entirely and there's a very egregious version of that that

[40:49] happens later that i'll mention when it when it comes up in the synopsis so there's that but also

[40:54] this movie is i think trading on like two male fantasies like it it like one much uglier than

[41:02] the other but like it gives the audience like the titillation of having this young girl sexually

[41:10] defiled and then it gives the audience the fantasy of like revenge against the defilers yeah and it's

[41:17] It's like having it both ways in that way,

[41:20] in like a really upsetting fashion.

[41:24] Like I spit on Rambo's grave or something.

[41:26] Yeah.

[41:27] Rambo spits on their grave.

[41:29] Who's spitting on whose grave here?

[41:32] The only grave we end up seeing, spoiler alert, is Gabri's.

[41:37] So I guess that's the trouble with that.

[41:39] I need to talk about Gabri's grave.

[41:41] Okay, well, we'll get there.

[41:42] Not a bang-up job on that grave.

[41:45] um it is always like a pretty teenage woman who is offered up as like the sacrifice so a man can

[41:54] go on a rampage like only like like it's a movie like you you i can only think of like a movie like

[42:01] ransom where it's a boy and in that case it's like also like a young boy you don't see a teenage boy

[42:08] being the one who is like and i'm just i think it's important to note like the creepiness of

[42:14] all this yeah in addition to the racism the the other the sort of spiritual cousin of this too

[42:19] is man on fire i think um which also sort of played the mexico kind of gag with with a a little

[42:26] white girl i mean okay not not as terrible but serves the same function which is like we prize

[42:32] our um nubile virginal uh daughters or daughter figures and if anyone if any brown person is

[42:39] innocence you know um and it's like the the the pearly pearly innocence that our our uh our grizzled

[42:49] heroes wish they still had yep um and but actually to your point dan i think you know basically once

[42:57] um once gabrielle has has has is no longer a version it's time for her to die right because

[43:05] there's no way that she could possibly rebound from that uh and lead a life and there's kind of

[43:10] this odd scene i were jumping ahead in the movie but but where rambo says you know you got a lot

[43:14] of living left to do there's all kinds of great things things are going to be great but essentially

[43:18] so mr salone's here again no that was me that was guys that was me oh wow and uh and essentially

[43:25] gabriella just gives up on life because presumably um you know there's no way you can come back from

[43:31] from that you know yes i assumed it was her like it was his old man speech that made her fall asleep

[43:37] and die but what's interesting to me vis-a-vis these movies and i'm thinking of man on fire as

[43:45] well but these kind of go to mexico and kill some people things is that presumably shot in in mexico

[43:50] or maybe certainly with mexican actors right and i'm just wondering what the experience is like for

[43:54] these mexican actors or day players or you know heavies who are like who are taking on these roles

[44:00] Of course, you're getting paid to do what you want to do, which is to act. And that's great. But like, how do you how do you reconcile the rampant xenophobia with this? And, you know, because it's not like, you know, there's there's no brown face here. Right. It's like you're actually hiring Mexican actors to play sleazy, evil Mexicans.

[44:20] But actually, which also reminds me, Joaquin Cossio, who I looked up on IMDb, because I'd worked with him before in this movie, A Better Life, and he didn't appear to be in the movie.

[44:30] He was listed as Don Manuel, and he's in the credits, but did he appear in the movie at all?

[44:35] He was a very round-faced...

[44:38] I'm assuming if there was a character named Don Manuel, he would have been like the head of the crime thing.

[44:44] I imagine so, but you only meet the Evil Martinez brothers, right?

[44:48] Yeah.

[44:49] maybe it's stuff that maybe it's in the foreign version and not the american version perhaps i

[44:53] don't know because there were extra scenes i think but it's yeah there's a lot of uh i guess what

[44:57] we're all saying dan i think we all and chris and sir i think we all agree this is a real icky

[45:01] movie and there's a lot of real icky stuff both on screen and behind the screen so let's get into

[45:06] it shall we anyway long story short rambo starts trying to track down gabriella manuel is no help

[45:11] there's that man well but he's not a don manuel uh he goes to giselle and threatens her with a

[45:15] knife to take him to the club and she points out the guy who took uh his niece uh meanwhile there's

[45:20] a mysterious woman at the bar watching rambo rambo uh gets information from the guy by literally

[45:25] shoving his thumb through the man's skin so he can pull out his clavicle bone and snap it

[45:29] he said he pulls out a bone are you talking about one of the bone cousins or maybe one of the bone

[45:34] paperbacks no no i'm not talking about you mean like jeff smith's bone yeah is it phony bone or

[45:40] phone it's not phone bone phone phony bone or or smiley bone the frugal gourmet wrote a comic book

[45:46] it's a different jeff smith damn okay and life was probably terrible for both of them until the

[45:51] frugal gourmet passed uh yeah so uh no this is an actual bone that's in a human body he really goes

[45:57] to town on this guy maybe more than necessary i have never in a movie i've never seen someone

[46:04] reach in and pull out another guy's clavicle bone and threaten to snap it in a movie that's true

[46:10] But the funny thing was also he was like, I snapped this bone.

[46:12] And it's like, you already pulled it out of my body, dude.

[46:14] Like, this is pretty bad.

[46:16] He leads Rambo to a bad guy house.

[46:21] That's all I can call it.

[46:22] Like a thug house or a bad guy house.

[46:24] Some sort of Chapo Trap house.

[46:25] And Rambo gets surrounded by bad dudes.

[46:28] This is the scene Chris was talking about earlier where the Martinez brothers, the bad guys of the movie, come up.

[46:33] And they have about 50 dudes beat up Rambo.

[46:35] And they don't have, they're not like doing anything.

[46:37] They're just all like hanging out.

[46:39] Yeah. I mean, they're just bad guys doing bad guy stuff.

[46:41] Rambo really walks right into it, and I'm not sure whether he intends to or not.

[46:45] Given his proficiency in killing, the fact that he gets kind of—he gets sussed out so quickly and surrounded so easily seems odd to me.

[46:56] Did it seem strange to you guys?

[46:57] I have a couple explanations for this.

[46:59] I have a couple.

[47:00] One, this is when he makes his mistake.

[47:03] Instead of doing what he does best, setting traps—

[47:05] He's soft-hearted.

[47:06] He's so angry and he's so soft-hearted that he just walks right in.

[47:09] Two, I think he's not used to being a white guy in a foreign country who's not a soldier or a mercenary.

[47:14] So he walked in expecting them to understand that he's on a war footing, but to them he's just some old dude and there's 50 of them.

[47:21] Three, this is the scene that makes us want him to kill them even more because they've shamed our hero.

[47:27] There's a scene in the movie The Ninth Configuration where you know that Stacy Keach is like a Rambo-type character, but he's tried to hide it in himself.

[47:36] And he goes to a bar, and this biker gang beats him up so badly until they finally are forcing him to lick beer off of this splintery wooden floor.

[47:43] And the whole scene, you're like, how much are they going to push him until he just finally—we have the release of him killing all these bikers.

[47:51] And they finally do it.

[47:52] And this is like a much slower version of that where it's like, would it be satisfying for Rambo to just go in and save his niece?

[47:59] Of course not.

[48:00] He's got to fail and then get revenge.

[48:03] And he's got to get, it's got to be personal revenge.

[48:04] And you'll see that because they carve an X into his face with a knife.

[48:09] And it's like.

[48:09] It's more like a V.

[48:10] Or a V.

[48:12] Yeah, I saw it as a V.

[48:13] I saw it as a V.

[48:13] Okay.

[48:14] I was watching it on an iPad while I was doing the dishes.

[48:16] So I might not have a clear view of it.

[48:18] But how can you even judge this movie if you didn't know it was a V?

[48:21] You're right.

[48:22] I'm not watching it the way it was meant to be watched.

[48:23] Because I didn't pay money for it.

[48:26] It just came with Amazon Prime.

[48:27] And the villain explains his whole plan at this point, right?

[48:30] They have Rambo on the ground.

[48:31] He's all beat up.

[48:32] It looks like he's been stung by a bunch of bees.

[48:33] And he's like, you know what?

[48:35] I was going to ignore her.

[48:37] Me being a crime boss, I don't think about the people beneath me.

[48:41] She's nothing to me.

[48:42] Now, my plan, but what's his plan?

[48:45] His plan is that, like, now I'm going to let you live just so you know I'm doing mean stuff to this girl all the time.

[48:51] It feels like a lot of work.

[48:53] I'm going to treat her worse than everybody, and you're going to spend the rest of your life,

[48:57] because you would never try to attack me again

[48:59] because I've done such a good job

[49:01] of showing you how tough I am.

[49:02] You're going to spend the rest of your life

[49:03] knowing that you made things worse for her

[49:05] by coming and trying to save her.

[49:07] And this is, I guess, an argument against anyone

[49:10] who says don't get involved, Rambo,

[49:12] because he has to get involved now.

[49:15] I don't know.

[49:16] I feel like it's a rewrite idea

[49:18] that at some point Gabriela should have said to him,

[49:20] promise me that you've reformed

[49:23] and you're not going to kill any more people.

[49:24] And he says,

[49:25] I promise you that I will never, ever want to commit violence on anybody.

[49:29] And so then I understand why he's just going to cruise in.

[49:32] He's like, I'm just going to talk nicely to them, explain that I'm Rambo, and everything will be okay.

[49:36] I'm sure if I speak reasonably to these fellows, they'll see that they should let my niece go.

[49:42] The rest of the women, of course, I don't care about because they're not related to me or even the same ethnicity as me.

[49:47] And so I'll forget about them, but I'm sure I can reach a common point of reference with these men.

[49:54] yeah it's uh my my stallone is really becoming colombo it's really fascinating uh the uh but

[50:00] yeah he's but they don't have that so instead i think he's just cocky he's just overconfident

[50:04] and he's at it he's out of practice he's been taming horses not killing dudes so uh rambo uh

[50:10] he gets beaten up unconscious and he gets picked up by carmen a good good guy journalist uh and

[50:17] she's also got her reasons for hating these bad guys meanwhile um we just see horrible things

[50:23] happened to gabriella and we don't need to delve too deeply into those we've kind of talked about

[50:27] what basically happens she ends up being a drug you know they force her drugs on her and force

[50:32] people on her it's terrible four days later uh rambo wakes up he's still got a little bit of a

[50:36] concussion uh and he says i gotta settle a score with the martinez brothers and carmen is like okay

[50:41] maybe i'll help you uh rambo then this is the first part of his plan where he just goes to a uh

[50:49] to where Gabrielle's being held and imprisoned

[50:52] with a hammer and just kills every man he sees

[50:55] and scares all the women.

[50:57] This is like a dumb version of You Are Never Really Here.

[51:00] Yes, exactly.

[51:01] And I still haven't seen You Are Never Really Here yet.

[51:04] So what is the difference between a movie like that

[51:06] and a movie like this?

[51:07] What makes that more of a work of art

[51:09] than another movie about a guy who has to save a woman

[51:11] so he kills people?

[51:12] Well, it shies away from every act of violence.

[51:16] Yeah, it doesn't give you any violent catharsis.

[51:19] you don't actually see him really do anything to anybody oh so it's kind of like only god forgives

[51:24] where it's like you know bad stuff is happening but it's mostly ryan gosling just looking at stuff

[51:29] uh but it's it it is tied more deeply in with the trauma that this veteran is going through

[51:35] and a man who lives in a world of only violence okay yeah okay yeah the violence is strange in

[51:43] this movie right it's not sort of balletic it's it's genuinely um angry um uh gross it's very

[51:51] graphic right um yeah it's it's very graphic and it's almost like there's no and i mean you could

[51:58] see this as honesty even though it's not but it's like there's no joy in it there's not even thrills

[52:03] in it it's just like sylvester stallone's got to do a job so he's going to do this job i'm just

[52:08] going to walk in the room and hit that guy as hard as i can with a hammer and then i'm going to walk

[52:11] to this room and hit this guy as hard as i can as a hammer and i kept thinking like of a like an old

[52:16] boy there's that hammer fight scene and it's an amazing scene it's a joyous hammer fight it's a

[52:21] joyous hammer fight exactly but in this one it's like you almost get a little bit of sisslon being

[52:25] like i can't believe i'm still making these movies all right walk in kill someone walk out and the

[52:30] women he's saving are so are so much seem to be so much more frightened by him by this maniac who's

[52:34] just wandering and beating someone to death with a hammer and it's uh well it's very it's like a

[52:39] shooting gallery too like but a hammer gallery like these guys just keep popping up it's like

[52:43] guy hammer guy hammer yeah now i have an idea for a carnival booth well now you know what it's like

[52:51] to be one of the hammer brothers in the mario brothers uh games and then the guy just shows

[52:55] up and starts killing everybody just starts jumping on rambo's head yeah and now i have an

[53:00] idea for a pseudonym guy hammer oh yeah yeah and now what would you do as guy hammer what would

[53:06] that pseudonym be used for gosh um guy hammer uh international construction worker okay

[53:14] glamour to the we got some nails that uh only you can hammer in over here and yeah now is it

[53:21] is that you do jobs all over the world or you only use foreign-made tools or what makes you

[53:25] an international i'm a globetrotter i'm a globetrotter and my my motto is uh when you're

[53:31] guy hammer everything looks like a nail wow okay they're like we're we're building this building

[53:38] using only the metric system somebody get me guy hammer so in france they call you ghee hammer

[53:44] yes right now uh ever since everything looks like a nail that's a pretty serious psychological

[53:49] problem that's like an oliver sacks level neurological disorder it's true but it's

[53:53] better than like having that cartoon disease where everything looks like a turkey because

[53:57] i don't try and eat everything that's true that's because if i just saw a turkey sitting on the

[54:03] sidewalk i'd immediately start eating it uh whereas if i saw a person just sitting on the

[54:08] sidewalk i'd be like oh that's a person uh but if i saw any food sitting anywhere you'd have no

[54:13] choice but to eat it even if it was driving a car even if it was wearing clothes and chase it down

[54:17] the street exactly as you do with normal chickens in a restaurant yes yeah yeah elena fixes a bib

[54:25] around his neck, and he pulls out his cutlery

[54:27] that he has on him at all times. I always have them with

[54:29] me, and I'm used to, and when

[54:31] the chicken starts running away, saying, hey, stop!

[54:33] I don't say for a second, hold on,

[54:35] let me square this with my regular frame

[54:37] of reference about chicken.

[54:38] Let me go to my schema about chicken that exists in my

[54:41] psychology. Do chicken usually run

[54:43] away and talk? They don't.

[54:44] Especially fully cooked chickens, which is what this one

[54:47] is, running just on those

[54:49] little caps that they put on top of the leg

[54:51] bones in a fancy restaurant in a

[54:53] cartoon. But that's because the non-chicken

[54:55] recognizing part of your brain has died,

[54:57] as Oliver Sacks would have pointed out.

[55:00] We learn so much about neurology

[55:02] from things like chicken seeing disease.

[55:05] Yeah, CSD, it's a problem,

[55:08] but it's also been a learning opportunity for the world.

[55:10] So Rambo's just killing people with hammers.

[55:13] He steals Gabriella away, and he's going to save her.

[55:16] The criminal brothers are real mad now,

[55:18] and they argue with each other.

[55:19] On the drive home, it's a long truck drive back,

[55:24] And Rambo, to try to keep Gabriela awake so that she doesn't die, Rambo kind of monologues about what Gabriela means to him and how important she is to him and his life was so bad until the movie makes the most unforgivable move, in my opinion, which we talked about, is that she dies.

[55:42] She is no good as a living person.

[55:45] She is only good as an object to fixate on for the purposes of bloody revenge.

[55:49] Well, and this was the moment that I was going to mention before that, like, sort of underlines how she is only a device that exists in relationship to Rambo is that, like, yeah, Rambo is monologuing about himself and about how, like, she gave him hope and, like, all this.

[56:09] i mean like yeah i mean i could see someone saying that but like even at this moment of death like

[56:15] it's like like you rescued me and then like as he's saying that she slips away right he's not

[56:21] talking about her upcoming college career and and prospects for life he's really just talking about

[56:26] his own trauma and how when she was in third grade she won six prizes in one day yeah it's not the

[56:32] movie's not called uh gabriella no blood well good point and we can't expect it to survive very fair

[56:39] and although there's part of me that did want to see rambo trying to relate to it to a teen girl

[56:43] on her level i mean like oh you got so many tiktoks to look at and uh billy eilish is her

[56:49] second album i know you're looking forward to that but like just trying just desperately trying

[56:54] to connect oh what's uh is degrassi a show that young people are still watching or there's a point

[56:59] where the where the grandma is complaining about the music that the teenagers are playing she's

[57:04] like oh what terrible music and he's like i could get used to it and i'm like wow that's better than

[57:10] i would say oh guys i was listening to uh i was listening to the conversation again and i had to

[57:15] bump our elliot off again just uh i didn't bump him off the way that i normally bump people off

[57:20] he's still alive i just tied him up and uh he's blindfolded so he doesn't know i'm here he's got

[57:24] put earplugs in his ears now something i should tell you about i was doing some research on my

[57:29] own movie because as you know my memories are horribly unreliable like for instance the other

[57:34] day uh my brother frank we were having brunch i like to go to brunch and it was again it was a

[57:40] zoom brunch because again at these times you can't go places but i made i tried to make home fries

[57:45] and they just weren't as good as the restaurant let me tell you that but you got to try these

[57:48] things you know so anyway that's weird because they're called home fries but but the restaurant

[57:53] version is so much better yeah dan true words were never spoken it's like how it's like how

[57:58] you drive on a parkway but you shoot people in their driveways now uh so and i would talk frank

[58:06] was like hey uh sly you remember when you were in that movie uh rhinestone and i was like i was

[58:11] never in such a film with that title sir and he kept reminding me and then i looked up in my uh

[58:16] my library of bound screenplays of all the movies that i've been in and there you go there was a

[58:20] screenplay for rhinestone and i read it and you know what i had a few laughs anyway the important

[58:25] thing is i was doing some research on this movie and uh i realized there was an earlier version of

[58:30] this movie that was called ramba where i died in this scene and then she took on my name but a girl

[58:36] version of it so it's ramba instead of rambo and then she got revenge and i don't know why we didn't

[58:41] do that because it meant i could have slept through the rest of the movie i could have you

[58:45] know because they don't she knows she didn't really die the actress just kind of went to sleep

[58:48] and then we didn't wake her up you know because she was so tired from the other scenes so we just

[58:53] kind of let her sleep in the car and uh it was kind of funny she woke up in the truck and we

[58:58] had all gone home and she was like what happened she called me she's got my number i'm that kind

[59:02] of guy i'm just handing my number out to people because i'm a real friend you know i like to be

[59:05] personable and you know there's no there's no barrier between me and them then why should

[59:09] there be i could snap their neck if i wanted to anyway the you know i don't have anything to worry

[59:13] about she called me and she was like sly i'm still in this truck i just woke up we were like oh you

[59:18] look so sweet just sleeping there that we didn't want to wake you up and we wrote the rest of the

[59:21] movie around you dying in that moment rather than just falling asleep and she's like but i wanted

[59:25] to be the vigilante i was going to take over when they well no no no but you fell asleep during the

[59:30] scene so it's fine i know you were tired so i'm just going to do the rest of it uh so so there

[59:35] was a version of the movie originally i died but sure yeah she kind of brought it on herself that

[59:40] uh you know i that i had to shoot the rest of the movie uh and it just became rambo last blood so

[59:46] it's kind of fascinating how many different versions of the movie there were that we went

[59:49] through while we were making it you know but that that happens sometimes you know when they

[59:53] were made that fascinating no it's i i mean it's uh it's kind of an insulting way to put it stew

[59:58] but okay i get your point you just called me stew yeah i didn't realize you even knew who i was

[1:00:03] rambo i know well i know i called you that because i'm gonna kill you and i'm gonna beat the stew

[1:00:07] out of you for what you said to me yeah as soon as i find out where you live also stewart calls

[1:00:15] you Rambo. He called you by your character

[1:00:16] name. I do the same thing.

[1:00:18] I sometimes call myself Rambo. I've called myself

[1:00:21] Oscar, which is not even my character

[1:00:22] in that movie. I called myself Rhinestone

[1:00:25] after I found out I was in a movie called Rhinestone.

[1:00:27] Because until I read the script, I assumed I

[1:00:28] was like a police detective named like Sal

[1:00:30] Rhinestone, who's like always trying to stop

[1:00:32] drug dealers or maybe like a kidnapper who wants

[1:00:34] to assassinate the president or something. But no,

[1:00:36] it turned out I was something with country music. I don't know.

[1:00:38] I read it yesterday and I forgot about it already.

[1:00:40] The point is, I'm going to kill you, Stu.

[1:00:42] Okay.

[1:00:44] Wow.

[1:00:44] Well, I'm glad that we're doing this digitally instead of in person.

[1:00:49] No, no, I can still get you because I've been taking virtuosity lessons,

[1:00:53] and now I can travel through the Internet, so I better get going with that.

[1:00:57] You know, Stallone, I do have one question.

[1:00:59] Are you drawn to characters specifically with R names?

[1:01:02] Because you've got Rocky, you've got Rambo, and you've got, of course, Ray Tango.

[1:01:05] Everyone's favorite.

[1:01:07] I'll answer both of those questions.

[1:01:08] One, I'm not drawn.

[1:01:09] I'm live action, but thank you.

[1:01:10] I consider myself kind of an animated person with a lot of energy,

[1:01:14] so I'll take that as a compliment.

[1:01:15] Two, yes, R is just, I consider it a power letter.

[1:01:20] And, you know, that's why Rambo, Rocky, Ray,

[1:01:24] the movie about Ray Charles, which I auditioned for,

[1:01:27] but did not get the part.

[1:01:28] I unsuccessfully pushed for that one.

[1:01:30] Yeah, other movies, Oscar ends with an R.

[1:01:33] And, of course, let's not forget, I was in Spy Kids 3D,

[1:01:37] and there's an R in three.

[1:01:38] So, you know, there's an R connection

[1:01:41] to all the movies that I've been in.

[1:01:44] Judge Jered.

[1:01:45] Yeah, straight for the fans.

[1:01:47] Yeah, stop-er my mom will shoot.

[1:01:49] Yeah, I mean, that's one way to pronounce it, sure.

[1:01:52] Look at Chris's face.

[1:01:56] He's going from being delighted by this podcast to ruining it.

[1:02:00] I was thinking of jumping in with Cobra, of course.

[1:02:04] Yeah, yeah, the movie where I was one half of a bra, yeah.

[1:02:10] And the other half was, I believe, who was it?

[1:02:14] It wasn't Elias Kodias.

[1:02:16] It wasn't James Woods.

[1:02:17] It wasn't Ray Moland.

[1:02:20] It was Rosie Greer.

[1:02:23] It was Rosie Greer, thank you, yes.

[1:02:26] Yeah, it was Rosie Greer and me.

[1:02:27] Mad Scientist turned us into a bra.

[1:02:29] It was one of the crazier movies.

[1:02:31] It was earlier in my career.

[1:02:32] Anyway, I should go in so you can finish.

[1:02:35] I assume talking about how great the movie is.

[1:02:37] Gotta go, bye.

[1:02:39] I wonder when the hell he ever knew when he was going to show up.

[1:02:41] Some kind of masked figure came in and tied me up,

[1:02:45] and I'm glad he let me go because my throat was starting to hurt.

[1:02:46] So anyway.

[1:02:47] Actually, I think it would have been, to what Stallone said,

[1:02:51] I didn't hear it, Elliot,

[1:02:52] but it would have been great if Rambo and his niece killed all the guys, right?

[1:02:58] Because then she could have actually enacted some kind of revenge on her own part.

[1:03:02] But no.

[1:03:02] Oh, yeah. No, no.

[1:03:04] It would have been like a human being who has gone through some trauma

[1:03:09] and like working through it and seeing how that affects that person i don't know similar to a movie

[1:03:15] called first blood yeah yeah um so he he buries her stewart you had something you want to say

[1:03:23] about her grave well what i i have a lot of questions one is that like they seem the grave

[1:03:29] is covered the headstone is a simple cross but it's covered in like like scrawl from i'm assuming

[1:03:35] her classmates like it was like a cast like a plaster cast from a broken arm yeah and so does

[1:03:41] that mean they had a funeral and if they had a funeral what did they tell everybody and did they

[1:03:47] tell the police like what how how did how did they get her body from the truck into the ground with

[1:03:54] a headstone on it guys i mean i mean maybe he just always has a headstone ready for everybody he

[1:04:00] knows in case they die and he has to get revenge on them and he just pulls it out of his tunnels

[1:04:04] he's got a lot of storage space and all the and all the notes were notes that he wrote

[1:04:08] to like yeah make it seem like she had a bunch of friends he wanted her ghost to think that she was

[1:04:13] more popular than she was so he like got into the character of a bunch of teens and he probably

[1:04:17] dressed up like them to really get into their personalities and he was like yeah see ya have

[1:04:22] a great summer and stuff like that you know uh you know uh bbff was just best buddy friends forever

[1:04:29] oh cool and uh yeah it's i assume that i assume it was all him play acting different okay well

[1:04:35] that that answered my question guys no there's no uh no plot holes in this movie uh rambo does

[1:04:41] the most healthy thing which is he takes all of her pictures off the wall and puts them in a crate

[1:04:45] and then uh says says to the to the older woman you leave i guess i'll go back to being a drifter

[1:04:51] now well he kicks her out basically he said well you you find out later why because he's

[1:04:55] got to murder a thousand people but um uh he says there's nothing here for you there's nothing here

[1:05:01] for me and he so he he tells her the the false cover story that he's going to wander the earth

[1:05:07] basically yes yeah yeah right and wrongs and uh possibly taming horses somewhere uh at first i

[1:05:14] wasn't sure that it was a ploy and so he just hung around his house and i was like well that was

[1:05:19] a mean way to get rid of a roommate that i guess you're tired of but i was confused by that yes

[1:05:24] it's time look sylvester look sylvester rambo this whole movie he's been doing things that

[1:05:29] don't come naturally to him riding horses going to mexico having a family now it's time for him

[1:05:35] to do what he does best make weapons and traps that's right it's a montage of him prepping his

[1:05:40] farm and his tunnels with lots of defenses and you know he's serious because he makes a new bow

[1:05:46] and arrow and a new knife which is like that's how you know he's he's flipping the switch you

[1:05:51] and getting back into killer Rambo mode,

[1:05:53] he goes back to Mexico

[1:05:55] and he asks the reporter to help him,

[1:05:57] but I don't know how she helps him

[1:05:59] because he just goes to one of the Martinez brothers' house

[1:06:02] and kills everybody there

[1:06:03] and cuts off the brother's head

[1:06:05] and leaves a picture of Gabriela there.

[1:06:08] I just love how he disposes of this head

[1:06:11] by, like, we see him driving back to America

[1:06:15] and he, like, puts it out the window and drops it.

[1:06:19] And I'm like, how long has he been Alfredo Garcia-ing this?

[1:06:22] Yeah, just talking to him?

[1:06:24] Yeah, he, like, took the head.

[1:06:26] He's like, oh, okay, I've got to make it really dramatic.

[1:06:28] Like, why don't I just leave the head there?

[1:06:30] But he's like, nope, you know, I've got to do this for the unseen camera.

[1:06:34] Take it with me and then throw it out the window.

[1:06:37] He had just seen Hereditary, and he was like,

[1:06:40] I want to reenact that head on the side of the road, so that's what I'll do.

[1:06:43] Spoilers.

[1:06:44] Oh, spoiler alert.

[1:06:46] I assume that he, you know, during the, he took the head and he's like, I'll just throw this on the ground.

[1:06:53] And then he realized he never had a friend.

[1:06:57] And so he just started talking.

[1:06:59] It was like Wilson in Cast Away.

[1:07:01] Like, he's like, oh, finally, this is my friend.

[1:07:02] But on the drive back, the head wanted to change the radio station.

[1:07:08] Or maybe he, like, said something mean about Rambo's car.

[1:07:10] And Rambo was like, forget you.

[1:07:11] I don't need a head for a friend.

[1:07:12] And threw him out, you know.

[1:07:14] I assume that he, you know,

[1:07:15] it wasn't until that he had already started driving

[1:07:18] that he's like, I took the head.

[1:07:20] Okay, well, when I pass the garbage can,

[1:07:24] I'll throw it out.

[1:07:24] But like, he keeps driving, there's no garbage can.

[1:07:27] He's like, oh, Rambo, you're so absent-minded.

[1:07:30] And he's like, is this, and then he's like in his car,

[1:07:34] he's like Googling, like, is a human head like,

[1:07:37] will it like, you know, decompose, like whatever.

[1:07:40] How fast decompose?

[1:07:43] I mean, also, he's already driving without a license because the bad guys took his driver's license earlier in the movie.

[1:07:47] So texting while driving is just another one of the crimes.

[1:07:50] And I guess it shows how desensitized I am to violence in movies that after I watched it, I was like, he did a lot of driving without a license in this movie.

[1:07:57] That's not okay.

[1:07:58] But this moment is so superfluous.

[1:08:00] I wish they had just gone further with it.

[1:08:02] Like you toss it out the window and go, that's no way to get ahead.

[1:08:05] I wish someone was here to hear me say that.

[1:08:08] There's a car driving the other way and it's a family going down to Mexico on vacation.

[1:08:12] and the kids in the back are fighting

[1:08:13] and the dad's like, so help me, I'll turn this car around

[1:08:17] and then a head lands on the hood

[1:08:18] and they go, ah, and he does turn the car around

[1:08:20] and they drive back.

[1:08:21] Or they could be playing

[1:08:23] Highway Bingo

[1:08:25] and Decapitated Head

[1:08:28] finishes the game.

[1:08:30] Every space on the card

[1:08:32] is marked except for Decapitated Head

[1:08:34] and they're like, oh man, I'll never win this game.

[1:08:36] And then the head lands

[1:08:38] on the hood and the kid goes, jackpot.

[1:08:41] He looks up and he says, thank you, God, like an animal house.

[1:08:44] He punches his sister and goes, punch head, and, you know, like car games, you know.

[1:08:51] Anyway.

[1:08:52] So he's baited the trap.

[1:08:54] He's baited the trap.

[1:08:55] I guess he leaves his address.

[1:08:57] Well, they have his driver's license.

[1:09:00] Of course, of course, of course.

[1:09:01] So probably off camera is the scene where they go to their tech guy and he looks up to see if that's still where Rambo is registered at for voting or tax purposes.

[1:09:10] We need you to extract an address from this driver's license.

[1:09:12] He's like, okay, but it's going to take time.

[1:09:16] Computer enhance.

[1:09:17] He goes, computer enhance, and he just holds it closer to his face.

[1:09:21] Yep.

[1:09:21] So Rambo knows there's an army of goons that's going to be heading his way.

[1:09:27] They do, and this comes up to, I feel like,

[1:09:32] maybe the most perfunctory defending your house under siege scene I've ever seen

[1:09:37] because Rambo is just destroying these guys

[1:09:40] and his traps are just destroying them.

[1:09:42] And it's lucky for the remaining Martinez brother

[1:09:45] that he brought as many guys as he did

[1:09:46] because if he didn't,

[1:09:47] Rambo wouldn't get to use all his traps.

[1:09:49] Like, I'm sure.

[1:09:50] That is the thing.

[1:09:51] It's like every single,

[1:09:52] if he missed out on one of the traps killing somebody,

[1:09:55] would he have to maneuver someone around very carefully

[1:09:57] to use that trap?

[1:09:59] Yeah.

[1:09:59] Is the question.

[1:10:00] And they're just set.

[1:10:01] And meanwhile, Rambo is tunneling underground

[1:10:04] and popping up every now and then like Bugs Bunny

[1:10:06] and shooting people and going back underground

[1:10:07] and it's like there's no

[1:10:09] and while watching I'm like oh there's no

[1:10:12] suspense in this scene but then I was like oh it's not

[1:10:14] supposed to have suspense it's just it's the visceral

[1:10:16] catharsis of watching people who are not like

[1:10:18] you murdered and blown up

[1:10:20] and having rakes in their faces

[1:10:21] and around the 50th guy getting killed

[1:10:24] I was like are they going to introduce any new

[1:10:26] traps or is it just going to be the same

[1:10:28] traps over and over again this is like this is the point in the movie

[1:10:30] where you're like okay there's like like 25

[1:10:32] minutes left and you're like okay

[1:10:33] this is what the whole movie this is the whole point of the movie like this movie exists for

[1:10:39] this last 25 minutes and you have to like sit through all the ugly unpleasant shit to like

[1:10:45] set up the reason why this this crazy like ending where everyone gets rakes the faces happen

[1:10:51] and that was my same review for home alone by the way well and if you're like me and you're

[1:10:58] totally desensitized toward violence and like can't you know can't just view it as like okay

[1:11:04] this is like a fun house like hollywood thing like let's see how they kill this guy like i could see

[1:11:11] getting like visceral thrills from just like okay well this is like the yeah stewart says like the

[1:11:17] ultra violent home alone but god damn i do not recommend anyone wade through the sewer to get

[1:11:24] to this point the crazy thing about this point too is it is edited like the super cut of best

[1:11:29] rambo kills that you would see on youtube like you'd see a youtube video that's like rambo last

[1:11:33] blood best kills and it's just like rake to the face blown up shot in the head napalm in his body

[1:11:39] like an alligator goes up his butt then like a piranha jumps through his neck and another rake

[1:11:44] to the face and then like buzzsaw through the crotch like just cut after cut after cut it's

[1:11:48] really crazy he does have some very rube goldberg-esque ways of killing people too where

[1:11:52] It's like, it's just not efficient.

[1:11:53] He drills a hole in a wall so that he can poke somebody with a metal spike.

[1:11:58] It's like, good thing this guy walked exactly where I needed to, needed him to, so I could cut his Achilles tendon.

[1:12:04] Yeah, the guy's like, what the hell's with that hole?

[1:12:08] Oh, no.

[1:12:09] And the thing is that my favorite Rambo kill, I mean, I think it's the one that is most often the highlight of those highlight cuts,

[1:12:21] is of course in rambo when he covers himself with mud and a guy walks by and then he opens his eyes

[1:12:28] and you're like rambo's behind him the whole time and they didn't do that and i'm like rambo could

[1:12:34] easily look like a mud wall like like i'm surprised he didn't get to do that again it's true he's so

[1:12:42] craggy he could basically have backed up into a rock wall and you wouldn't notice you wouldn't

[1:12:46] have to put any kind of camouflage on him that'd be a funny scene if he takes off all his clothes

[1:12:50] that he's naked and he just stands against a wall and it looks like he's made out of

[1:12:53] craggy rocks the thing about that mud kill that makes it less cool is just imagining

[1:12:57] him waiting there hoping a guy walks by that's the best part i'm gonna feel like that scene

[1:13:03] in like kingdom of the crystal skull where all those like people are like in the mud

[1:13:08] on the wall just waiting for mutt williams and indy to show up that they've been waiting

[1:13:12] for hundreds of years for somebody to come by so they can attack them he uh it is it's

[1:13:17] just like kill after kill and it reaches like a 1980s level of murder excess and i will say if

[1:13:23] the priest if the preceding movie had not been so ugly and so like horrible then i might have

[1:13:28] enjoyed this just because it's so goofy and there's a moment where rambo starts blasting the

[1:13:33] doors over the loudspeakers underneath and it's like oh this became the thing that bloodshot the

[1:13:39] movie we were talking about in the last episode was parodying when it had the guy dancing to

[1:13:44] psycho killer and then and killing uh vin diesel's wife like that he's like and also the the door

[1:13:50] song is all about how like the old are gonna die and the young will take over the earth while this

[1:13:54] very old man is killing all these younger guys he's like 72 when this was made right 72 like

[1:14:00] 1972 yeah yeah no that's he has uh he's he said probably i think about 15 years ago he said he

[1:14:06] was too old to play rambo anymore and i guess he decided uh he was he wasn't i mean he still looks

[1:14:11] terrifying i don't yeah uh and rambo gets shot but it's fine he can absorb bullets like like

[1:14:18] nobody's business he lets uh it's fine because there's ultimately no stakes at this point we're

[1:14:23] like no we're like well if rambo dies he's at least doing what he fucking loves

[1:14:27] well but it's important that he literally tear out the heart of his enemy oh right

[1:14:35] yeah he said he said he wants the martinez brothers to know what it feels like to know

[1:14:41] his grief and his anger to know what it's like to have his heart torn out so he leads the last

[1:14:45] bat he says i saved you for last the last bad guy and uh chases him into a barn and he traps in the

[1:14:51] barn and rambo shoots his arms and legs full of arrows that go so far through his body that they

[1:14:56] pin him to the wall of the barn and then he walks up to him i mean english longbowman could put an

[1:15:01] arrow through a tree ellie that's true and rambo we know he's good with bows and arrows like that's

[1:15:06] It's not like this is a new thing.

[1:15:08] Bow and arrow technology has advanced since then, too.

[1:15:11] So there you go.

[1:15:13] Since the era of the English longbowman?

[1:15:15] Yeah, that's true.

[1:15:15] That's not a goof, Elliot, is what I'm saying.

[1:15:17] Don't go on to IMDb.

[1:15:19] Okay, fair point, fair point.

[1:15:20] It's just earlier we saw him shoot arrows through playing cards.

[1:15:23] And it's like, is the human body the same thinness as the playing cards?

[1:15:27] But it makes me wish this was about Rambo getting trapped in a Home Depot

[1:15:31] and having to use the stuff that was there, like a staple gun and things like that,

[1:15:34] to try to stop people.

[1:15:36] And they could have called it either Home Rambo or Rambo Depot or Home Rambo-po.

[1:15:41] Maybe Home Rambo-po.

[1:15:42] They'll get confused with Tempo-po.

[1:15:46] Oh, what a great dog.

[1:15:48] Rambo-po is when he uses noodles to kill people.

[1:15:51] That would be amazing.

[1:15:54] He strangles them.

[1:15:56] He wants to teach this woman how to make the best ramen, but he's just killing everybody who comes in.

[1:16:02] Man, what a great movie, Tempo-po.

[1:16:05] So he chops this dude's heart out, and he, like, holds it in front of him, and we're like...

[1:16:10] Well, no, no, no, okay, let's not gloss...

[1:16:12] Come on, Stuart, you're not giving this a moment.

[1:16:13] Yeah, come on, you need the foreplay before that.

[1:16:15] He stabs in.

[1:16:16] He walks up to him.

[1:16:17] He takes a while walking up to him with the knife, too.

[1:16:19] Yeah.

[1:16:19] And he stabs in.

[1:16:21] He explains that, metaphorically, the guy had torn out his heart, so literally he's going to tear out his heart, which is a bit...

[1:16:27] So he can appreciate this.

[1:16:28] He makes this L-shaped cut in the guy's chest, reaches in, yanks out the heart, which is still beating, showing it to him.

[1:16:39] And this is the one moment of actual enjoyment I got out of Last Blood, because I was like, is he going to do it?

[1:16:45] Is he going to do it?

[1:16:46] Holy shit, he did it.

[1:16:48] And you're waiting for him to take a bite out of that heart.

[1:16:50] But unfortunately, he doesn't.

[1:16:52] He thinks about it.

[1:16:53] But also, there's a problem with the villain in as much as he has nothing interesting to say at that point.

[1:16:59] You know, you want some kind of rhetorical flourish from the villain to justify the intensity of tearing out his heart.

[1:17:08] But all he says is, fuck you, basically.

[1:17:10] Yeah, he's such a he's such a generic, faceless, almost nameless villain that it's and yeah, you want like if this is probably gonna be the last Rambo movie.

[1:17:20] hate to break it to you guys uh but you kind of want him not that rambo the movies have ever been

[1:17:25] known for their like necessarily they're amazing bad guys but you want someone who or dialogue i

[1:17:30] mean i'm rambo is it it's the second rambo right where he gets to say she asks what does expendable

[1:17:36] mean and he goes oh it's like you know you're invited to a party and you don't show up and no

[1:17:39] one cares and i've always loved that line oh and there's the line where he's like who are you your

[1:17:44] worst nightmare i mean that shit's that shit's yeah yeah exactly but uh there's not a lot of

[1:17:49] good conversations i guess but but you do want something from him but instead it's just like

[1:17:55] you might as well have rambo say to him hey listen i'm sorry you had to be the bad guy that i acted

[1:18:00] out the last of my war trauma on but uh this could be particularly bad for you uh now wait which

[1:18:06] which rambo movie was it where rambo had to go and he had to rescue stanley spadowski from the thing

[1:18:13] and then they climbed onto the thing and they kept shooting guys and rambo is played by weird al

[1:18:19] You're thinking of UHF.

[1:18:21] Oh, okay.

[1:18:22] All right.

[1:18:23] Yeah.

[1:18:23] So Rambo, this is the moment in another movie where Rambo, he climbs onto his porch and

[1:18:31] he has a voiceover about how all his life he's only known death and everyone he knows

[1:18:34] is gone.

[1:18:35] And the way this movie should end is that Rambo dies.

[1:18:38] Yeah.

[1:18:39] Which, yeah, I expected that, but no.

[1:18:41] In his voiceover he goes, but I guess I'll defend their memories forever.

[1:18:44] And it's like, oh, okay, so are you going to keep going?

[1:18:47] And it's like, Rambo's like, my life is terrible.

[1:18:49] Everyone I know has died.

[1:18:50] I'm just a harbinger of death.

[1:18:52] Well, tomorrow's another day.

[1:18:54] No sleep for the wicked, I guess.

[1:18:57] His body has absorbed the bullets he's been pierced with as well.

[1:19:00] Oh, by this point, his body has been shot so many times

[1:19:03] that he knows how to turn that into nutrients.

[1:19:04] Yeah.

[1:19:05] Well, and like, when he says he's going to defend their memories forever,

[1:19:09] I'd like to see him on that, like, chair on his laptop,

[1:19:12] like, writing their story.

[1:19:13] Yeah.

[1:19:17] The next scene, and then cuts to, it's like the end of Born on the Fourth of July.

[1:19:20] It cuts to him at a signing for his best-selling book about his experiences.

[1:19:23] And then over the credits, we get shots from the past three Rambo movies.

[1:19:33] It's mostly scenes from First Blood.

[1:19:35] Yeah.

[1:19:35] And they show a couple shots from the other ones.

[1:19:37] Well, they cover it all.

[1:19:38] But it's just a hilarious way, like, don't get me wrong.

[1:19:42] this is by far the part of the movie that i enjoyed the most just seeing like shots from

[1:19:46] old rambo movies at the same time it is such a wacky way to end this movie because it's just

[1:19:51] like rambo is not a heartwarming character so it's kind of like remember all these fun times

[1:19:56] we had with rambo it's all images of him killing people and being angry i thought it was especially

[1:20:03] weird that they played you got a friend in me over that was the strange part yeah you're like

[1:20:07] look at how young uh sylvester stallone is wow look how yoked he is guys yeah look at those traps

[1:20:15] so uh rambo last blood is very much i would say the least of these movies and like here's the

[1:20:21] thing about the rambo movies except for the first one i think when all of them came out they were

[1:20:25] considered trash and kind of time has allowed us to view them semi-ironically in a way that makes

[1:20:31] them more fun but i don't know that this one is going to go through that process it's just so

[1:20:35] gross no and that leads us into final judgments uh where we make our final judgments on movies

[1:20:42] that we watch and whether they are a good bad movie a bad bad movie or a movie we kind of liked

[1:20:48] i will say that this is a bad bad movie it is it has an ugly black heart uh it loves to put its

[1:20:55] characters through unpleasantness uh uh just because it can and i did not enjoy it

[1:21:02] so watching this movie put me in mind of a scene in Rambo 3 where Rambo gets shot and the bullet

[1:21:11] goes all the way through him so the only way he can cauterize the wound the only way he can

[1:21:16] handle this trauma is by filling that wound with gunpowder and then lighting it on fire

[1:21:22] and that's kind of what going through watching this movie felt like to me

[1:21:26] yeah it's a bad bad movie Stuart I assume you're saying it's a movie you kind of liked then

[1:21:32] oh yeah no it's a bad bad movie it's and chris uh i want to apologize on behalf of the flop house

[1:21:38] for making you watch this particular one i knew this was i knew this movie was like

[1:21:42] uh i had heard a lot about its racism but i did not know i didn't know ahead of time about it's

[1:21:49] just uh grimness and disgustingness in terms of the way it handles the character so i guess

[1:21:56] we'll have to save a fun one for you next time.

[1:21:59] Well, listen, a plot twist.

[1:22:02] I loved it.

[1:22:04] Oh, wow.

[1:22:06] Just for the politics.

[1:22:09] You know, sometimes you guys are just too hard on movies.

[1:22:14] You're right.

[1:22:16] We really should have checked our brain at the door.

[1:22:18] I want to really think about what the intentions of the director.

[1:22:21] Looks it up.

[1:22:22] Can't find it.

[1:22:23] German guy, I think.

[1:22:26] Yeah, he had like one other credit.

[1:22:28] He directed the movie Get the Gringo.

[1:22:32] So the guy has a great relationship with movies set in Mexico.

[1:22:36] Yeah, he's the guy you got you for cultural relevance.

[1:22:40] But this was his second movie as director.

[1:22:45] He was an assistant director.

[1:22:46] Sophomore slaughter, I call it.

[1:22:50] Yeah. Yeah, it was. I was really I was disappointed because I expect a certain level of like bigness through Rambo movies.

[1:22:58] Yeah. Yeah. And this was such a part of it was that it was such a like small movie and really like just unpleasant.

[1:23:06] And, you know, what are you going to do? They don't the world's not safe for Rambos anymore.

[1:23:10] You know, I mean, what do you say? Like this movie felt so much like a Western.

[1:23:14] I don't know if I would consider – do you feel that a lot of the other Rambo movies are westerns, like that kind of a lone hero?

[1:23:22] Yes, they're definitely – they're kind of westerns in the clothing of war movies because it's almost always about a hero going in – a lone hero going in to save some people, except for the first one.

[1:23:36] The first one is a kind of vigilante slasher movie almost in the clothes of a 70s character drama.

[1:23:44] But it's this is very much like this movie wants to be unforgiven really badly.

[1:23:49] And it's even to the point of every time he was standing over that grave, I was like, oh, yeah, because an unforgiven he stands at a grave.

[1:23:56] And it's just not unforgiven because unforgiven, I think, is aware of how tawdry the things it's covering are.

[1:24:02] And the whole point of unforgiven is like this is the kind of stuff that usually in movies we treat heroically.

[1:24:07] But it's kind of gross and bleak here.

[1:24:09] And in this one, it was like the world's a terrible place.

[1:24:12] and it takes a bad man to set things right.

[1:24:14] We need Rambos on that wall protecting us.

[1:24:16] Yeah.

[1:24:17] Oh, boy.

[1:24:18] So I can't wait for,

[1:24:19] but I kind of want them to do one called Space Rambo,

[1:24:22] where he gets frozen and thought,

[1:24:24] I mean, I guess that's Demolition Man to a certain extent.

[1:24:26] Rambo X.

[1:24:26] Rambo X,

[1:24:28] where the one where he is playing Malcolm X,

[1:24:32] that seems like very tasteless casting.

[1:24:34] That was not what I was referencing.

[1:24:35] I don't know why you'd suggest that.

[1:24:37] Not what I was referencing.

[1:24:38] I don't know why you'd ever compare the two.

[1:24:39] Rambo versus Jason.

[1:24:42] You could see him, actually, in the Pantheon of Horror icons.

[1:24:46] Oh, yeah.

[1:24:46] Oh, he's much more of a—

[1:24:49] Body count alone.

[1:24:49] He is like the slasher who's the good guy, and he just exists to kill, but he happens to be the good guy.

[1:24:56] But just the fact that he is more of a cartoon than a character.

[1:25:01] He's more of a Freddy Krueger or a Jason than he is like a John Wayne.

[1:25:06] Again, John Wayne's not a character, he's a person, but you know what I mean?

[1:25:10] Yeah, yeah.

[1:25:10] Right, Stu?

[1:25:11] Oh, yeah, I know.

[1:25:12] Hey, MaxFun listeners.

[1:25:19] Have you been listening to MaxFun for a while and you've just been wondering, where's the new Flat Earth podcast to keep hearing about?

[1:25:25] Well, here it is.

[1:25:26] We give you all the facts on NASA's lies and how we know that the Earth is actually flat.

[1:25:32] Just kidding.

[1:25:34] This is Ono, Ross, and Carrie, and we join fringe religious groups.

[1:25:39] We undergo alternative medical treatments.

[1:25:41] And we hang out with people like 9-11 truthers, flat earthers.

[1:25:44] We find out why do people believe strange things.

[1:25:46] We join them and we tell you all about it.

[1:25:49] We have a lot of fun.

[1:25:49] We make a lot of friends.

[1:25:50] Yeah, we do.

[1:25:51] We joined the Mormons.

[1:25:52] We joined the Scientologists.

[1:25:54] We got acupunctured.

[1:25:55] We got fire cupped.

[1:25:56] We got ear kindled.

[1:25:57] We've done it all and we're going to keep doing it all.

[1:25:59] Why don't you check out Ono, Ross, and Carrie at MaximumFun.org.

[1:26:03] Welcome.

[1:26:10] Thank you.

[1:26:11] These are real podcast listeners, not actors.

[1:26:14] What do you look for in a podcast?

[1:26:17] Reliability is big for me.

[1:26:19] Power.

[1:26:20] I'd say comfort.

[1:26:21] What do you think of this?

[1:26:23] That's Jordan, Jesse, go.

[1:26:28] Jordan, Jesse, go.

[1:26:29] They came out of the floor and down from the ceiling.

[1:26:33] That can't be safe.

[1:26:34] I'm upset.

[1:26:36] Can we go now?

[1:26:37] Soon.

[1:26:40] jordan jesse go a real podcast

[1:26:43] the flop house is sponsored in part by squarespace hey why not use squarespace if you want to make a

[1:26:53] website guys you can use squarespace to uh blog or publish content sell products and services of

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[1:27:27] use the offer code flop to save 10 off your first purchase of a website or domain hey dan i had an

[1:27:36] idea for a website and i was wondering if squarespace might be able to help me with it i

[1:27:39] they haven't let us down yet but that's true i've done i made all so this is i was kind of inspired

[1:27:44] by the movie and you know i moved into a new house last year and we had kind of a rat problem when we

[1:27:49] first got here and i was like if only there was a service where i could sign up online and they

[1:27:53] could set up rambo style traps around my house to catch these rats and so it doesn't exist so i'm

[1:27:59] going to have to make it. And so I wanted to register the domain ratbowbrandrambostylerattraps.com

[1:28:09] and at ratbowbrandrambostylerattraps, we take the intensity and the killing ability that only a

[1:28:17] traumatized Vietnam vet has and use it to rid your home of vermin. So we've got little spring-loaded

[1:28:23] rakes that stab rats in the head. We've got like tiny little thermite bombs that blow rats up.

[1:28:27] We have a little man who runs around with a pump-action shotgun and just blows the head off of rats.

[1:28:32] And so people need to sign up to the website.

[1:28:34] I was trying to do this just through bus ads, and it wasn't working.

[1:28:38] LA, do you think you're going to have some trouble with people who would prefer, I don't know, say like a nonviolent means of ridding their house of vermin?

[1:28:46] I believe that that is not our market.

[1:28:48] I think there's an untapped market there for people who want a very violent means of ridding their house of vermin.

[1:28:53] And so RatbowBrandRamboStyleRatTraps.com is your place to either buy these traps and install them yourself, which I would not recommend at all, or to buy the traps and then also hire one of our RatbowBrandRamboStyleRatTrap specialists to set these traps up around your house.

[1:29:10] And just listen to some of these testimonies from satisfied RatbowBrandRamboStyleRatTrap customers.

[1:29:17] Okay, here's just one from a satisfied customer.

[1:29:19] Yeah, I had some rats in my house, and I figured, oh, what better way to get rid of them than to set up some Rambo Traps.

[1:29:25] I decided to go with one of their advisors, who helped me set the traps over the internet during a Skype call.

[1:29:33] And you know what? The next day, my house was littered with the body parts of broken rats.

[1:29:38] Thank you, Ratbo Brand, RamboStyleRatTraps.com.

[1:29:42] So you can't argue with that kind of success and that kind of happy customer.

[1:29:47] So you think Squarespace would be able to help me set up that website, which apparently I already have set up because I have a testimonial?

[1:29:52] I assume you used Squarespace in the past, but yes, I think that they could help with that.

[1:29:59] Okay, great. Thanks, Dan. Much appreciated.

[1:30:01] The podcast is also sponsored in part by Raycon.

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[1:31:52] Can you spell Raycon?

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[1:31:55] It is Ray, like the artist Ray Charles, and Con, like the movie Con Air.

[1:32:04] all one word raycon ray charles conair got it yep no raycon uh so guys now's the time that we

[1:32:14] take some letters from listeners uh i have them in front of me okay in my hot little hand i'm

[1:32:20] gonna mention uh we are recording this at a time when if there wasn't a global pandemic stewart

[1:32:25] and dan and i would be in toronto right now we would have just done a show the night before

[1:32:29] sorry toronto i know i i'm disappointed we didn't get to do that show we will be back someday i

[1:32:34] promise that yeah yes uh yes we all look forward uh for many reasons uh for the end of this thing

[1:32:42] uh our reason is a little less um uh important than others but we do want to see all of you

[1:32:48] in person we miss touring um but uh this first letter i have neglected to put who sent it

[1:32:57] okay so a mystery afoot so a whole name withheld uh why hello general kerfloppers i want to start

[1:33:06] off by saying i enjoy you all equally except for elliot he's my favorite hey thanks letter

[1:33:12] written by elliot's mom no it seems to me i know why dan buried the name of this person

[1:33:18] uh i think in january i finally got caught up on my previous favorite podcast my brother my

[1:33:24] brother and me so i had to find a new one and i settled on yours i'm writing this uh as i'm

[1:33:29] writing this i'm on episode 159 i'm saying i'm very hooked on your podcast and the catalog is

[1:33:34] invaluable to my sanity during the quarantine we're in 159 which one is that let's take a look

[1:33:40] shall we yeah let's let's look it up off house 159 it is walking with dinosaurs oh wow oh i

[1:33:50] forgot about that kevin marr uh i have a question for you all as well i'm a younger listener

[1:33:56] if you could not tell and i wanted to ask if there were any movies you guys think

[1:34:00] are very important for a younger fan of film to see i really like gangster and crime films

[1:34:06] but really i'm happy to watch and explore all kinds of different genres of film and uh so that's

[1:34:14] a question i i like my immediate thought off this is like just be curious like i don't know if

[1:34:22] there's something that i would point someone to specifically just because i don't like being the

[1:34:28] kind of person who's like you gotta see this but at the same time but like i think it's good

[1:34:33] if you're interested in a film to sort of broaden your tastes early uh so you don't get set in your

[1:34:41] ways like watch old movies so you're not i don't know like confused by the different ways that

[1:34:48] people may have gone about uh acting or putting together a film back then watch silent films

[1:34:54] watch foreign films um you know sample around yeah i mean you want to watch the classics you

[1:35:01] you want to watch castle freak the granny invisible maniac uh but i mean the family

[1:35:07] of the family of course all of the four the holy uh quadrilogy uh but the of course uh if you like

[1:35:15] gangster movies and you want a foundational piece of cinema of course i'm going to recommend that

[1:35:20] you watch ricky o the story of ricky the best movie ever made and how is that a gangster film

[1:35:26] well i mean it takes place in a private prison elliot good point sure uh and of course ricky

[1:35:34] has been rightfully in prison

[1:35:36] because he killed the drug dealers that gave

[1:35:38] drugs to his girlfriend and made her jump off of a

[1:35:40] building. So watch

[1:35:42] Story of Ricky. Ricky O.

[1:35:44] Yeah, it's great.

[1:35:44] I'm going to repeat what

[1:35:48] Dan said, which is just try to watch a little

[1:35:50] bit of everything and see what appeals to you

[1:35:52] before you start

[1:35:54] hearing from other people what they

[1:35:56] like and what they don't like. Or if you

[1:35:58] start hearing from other people what they like and what they don't like,

[1:36:00] take it with a grain of salt and use that as a

[1:36:02] way to try new stuff, but you don't have

[1:36:04] to feel the same way other people do about it. But the way I learned about movies was in an

[1:36:09] incredibly haphazard way, which was literally just, I would go through the TV guide because

[1:36:13] that's how old I am. Now I go through the onscreen cable guide and any movie that sounded remotely

[1:36:19] interesting to me, I would tape and I would watch it. And so I ended up watching a lot,

[1:36:23] a lot of different stuff. Some of it wasn't so great, but some of it is stuff that I never would

[1:36:27] have known to seek out. Uh, and so like, and I still do that when I go through the cable guide

[1:36:32] on Turner Classic Movies

[1:36:33] and basically if there's

[1:36:33] a foreign movie

[1:36:34] that I've never heard of

[1:36:35] I'll record it

[1:36:35] and I've seen a lot of stuff

[1:36:37] that I wouldn't have

[1:36:37] seen otherwise

[1:36:38] that I really liked a lot

[1:36:40] Hey Elliot

[1:36:41] I'm sorry to interrupt

[1:36:42] I stepped away

[1:36:43] because my cat

[1:36:44] is going crazy

[1:36:44] but did you say

[1:36:46] you just follow

[1:36:47] the advice of Armand White

[1:36:48] and watch whatever

[1:36:49] movies he likes?

[1:36:50] That's exactly what I said

[1:36:51] I said there's no

[1:36:52] there's no critic

[1:36:53] who represents my taste

[1:36:55] as much as Armand White

[1:36:56] I hate the Toy Story movies

[1:36:57] I love Jack and Jill

[1:36:58] if other critics

[1:37:00] like a movie

[1:37:00] then I hate it

[1:37:01] and if other critics hate a movie then i think it's great and uh the end that's exactly the

[1:37:06] opposite of what i would do stewart come on uh but yeah just like uh anything that seems remotely

[1:37:12] interesting try it and even things that don't seem interesting try them and just sample as

[1:37:17] widely as you can chris what about you you're a professional filmmaker oh uh yeah i would say

[1:37:23] i agree with what you guys are saying um and i would say take it take a lateral move here like

[1:37:29] don't get stuck just in american gangster movies but but let's uh let's kind of reset the focus

[1:37:34] and look at um high and low which is one of my favorite movies of all time a kurosawa movie right

[1:37:39] which which was then kind of ripped off for ransom later um and high and low is it is formally an

[1:37:46] amazing film right a lot of it just takes place just in one room but it's always exciting uh and

[1:37:52] yojimbo okay which is also about gangs that it's just set in the 16th century in japan uh another

[1:37:58] curacao film um and so it's got that kind of gangster uh attitude to it but formally and in

[1:38:05] terms of its tropes it's it's quite different you know chris i this leads me actually to a question

[1:38:10] i was just sort of wondering about for myself that's sort of related which is is there like

[1:38:17] a movie or movies that as a filmmaker like you felt you particularly learned something from to

[1:38:24] apply in your work um i think it would probably be sort of screwball comedies um and uh preston

[1:38:32] sturgis uh movies maybe um and from sort of hollywood comedies from lubitsch through uh

[1:38:41] wilder uh with a detour through sturgis is probably the thing that would at most influence

[1:38:45] sort of the way the well when i'm actually successful at doing it the stuff that i that

[1:38:50] i do you know the sort of sense that uh subsidiary characters are really important this kind of sense

[1:38:55] of uh humane but cynical uh blend of humanity and cynicism um and i would love to think that

[1:39:03] that all the japanese movies that i love influence me but i i can't really spot it in my own stuff

[1:39:08] all right well let's move on shall we good answers good answers good answers uh this next and final

[1:39:17] letter is from charles last name withheld who writes charles nelson riley of charles schultz

[1:39:24] dear lords of flopdom i was reading an article recently about a kickstarter and aimed at funding

[1:39:31] the digital removal of the rat that scampers across a balcony banister at the end of the

[1:39:36] departed symbolizing the rat that was just killed in the movie oh my god that's what it meant

[1:39:43] oh it makes so much sense now because he's a rat apparently he died

[1:39:53] but wait no that makes that makes perfect oh my god it makes perfect sense okay

[1:40:02] well that's that's why he's the master that's why scorsese oh wow okay apparently this was

[1:40:10] he can't get over it

[1:40:14] apparently this was an egregious sin against cinema honestly i don't give a shit about the

[1:40:23] rat and who is anyone to tell scorsese what to put in or omit from his movies the reason i bring

[1:40:27] it up is that this gave me an idea for a way to settle ding dong gate once and for all and have

[1:40:33] stew end up on the right side of history all we have to do is create a kickstarter to fund a

[1:40:38] reshoot of the now infamous scene and have the freak actually rip off his ding dong better yet

[1:40:44] why not give him two ding dongs he is a freak after all and have him rip both of them off in

[1:40:48] unison it would be quite frankly amazing keep it floppy charles last name withheld oh that's great

[1:40:55] yeah i i do have a glossy uh eight by ten of uh jonathan fuller in the full freak makeup and he

[1:41:02] did sign it i ripped it off myself so i think i'm in the right uh you would say the late stewart

[1:41:09] gordon did say on twitter which is how the president communicates so it's an official

[1:41:14] the freak did not rip off his own ding dong so i guess uh there's a lot of questions basically a

[1:41:21] lot of people a lot of a lot of questions the uh and then of course you know uh to talk about a

[1:41:26] movie that hasn't come out yet they they have the uh the upcoming uh remake or reimagining

[1:41:31] of castle freak that's going to be coming out sometime at some point when movies are released

[1:41:37] again uh and maybe we'll get to the bottom of it in there maybe they'll explore that that you know

[1:41:42] facet of uh georgia the freak we'll find out i want there to i want there to be a scene where

[1:41:46] he rips off his own ding dong and he just goes this is for you stewart yeah and up until that

[1:41:52] then and then after then no other mention of stewart is made now i'm going to uh i'm going

[1:41:57] to go off on a limb here and i'm going to say something a little controversial guys about the

[1:42:01] thing that triggered this question which was uh or letter i guess so one i would say it's really

[1:42:06] except for purposes of humor or art pieces it's really not up to fans to decide how to manipulate

[1:42:12] a movie that got made because it's not theirs and they didn't make it and unless you're talking

[1:42:17] about something like the clock which is built out of uh other people's films uh which is a big 24

[1:42:23] hour art piece then like what are you doing but also guys and maybe you'll disagree with me i

[1:42:27] like that rat at the end of the departed i think it's great of course it's obvious it's about how

[1:42:32] there's rot everywhere in this city and even at this in this apartment there's like still vermin

[1:42:37] falling going everywhere because we live in a fallen world so like but the idea that like oh

[1:42:42] it's obvious like of course it is fuck you dude like movies can be obvious sometimes symbology

[1:42:47] can be obvious that's fine deal with it well also i think it's fun and goofy like i think that people

[1:42:52] are taking the departed a little too seriously if they get mad at the rat like it's like

[1:42:57] i love the departed but it is not like a deep exploration like for a scorsese film in particular

[1:43:05] like it is a fun pulpy movie about like these parallel okay i mean like you're saying it's

[1:43:13] more on the shutter island and scorsese than the silence and yeah um i think he won an oscar for it

[1:43:19] so i think you must be wrong okay i mean but even then like you can win an oscar for a movie that

[1:43:24] isn't that is that has never happened that's super subtle i mean come on that's but at the uh i that

[1:43:30] was a movie that like i really enjoyed that movie i like it honestly more than infernal affairs the

[1:43:35] movie it's based on which i felt like kind of didn't use the premise as well as it could have

[1:43:39] but that when people were like oh that rat at the end i was like you mean this amazing part at the

[1:43:44] end where a rat comes out like i don't understand what's the problem yeah that's like watching

[1:43:48] better off dead and being like oh that burger part and i'm like what's wrong with you

[1:43:53] but what if uh what if you added a sort of a from the rat at the end i mean i would love that

[1:44:00] honestly if the rat looked at the camera and winked i would have loved it like why not sure

[1:44:04] go ahead if it was and it's also the fact that it's it's not happening during the scene when

[1:44:09] they're making love to uh comfortably numb like it's not happening during one of the emotional

[1:44:13] scenes it's happening during the the very end when the movie's over and it's like gotcha wink

[1:44:18] you know like if there were some cheese at the edge of frame also that would explain it and it

[1:44:23] wouldn't seem so arbitrary if the reason he came in while he when he right before he was murdered

[1:44:28] the rat he was wiping cheese on the banister of his of the what the the terrace on his apartment

[1:44:34] uh that he bought with his ill-gotten games and it's because why i don't know he's a crazy bad

[1:44:39] guy he likes to watch wipe cheese on things but it's a little bit like uh i don't know i could

[1:44:44] see i could see this cheddar you know because then it's this this symbolism is double because

[1:44:50] cheddar is you know is money right he's got so much cheddar he's got a fridge just full of cheddar

[1:44:55] cheese he's like what am i gonna do with this i got so much it sounds like heaven so i i i'm gonna

[1:45:01] to say something that might sound a little snobby and i i genuinely don't mean it that way but i

[1:45:05] think that people who watch a lot of movies might have a higher tolerance for silliness in their

[1:45:11] movies just because like if you only if you're not like watching a lot of stories maybe you expect

[1:45:18] them to be a little more straightforward like i this this was brought it like the reason i was

[1:45:22] talking about this was someone tweeted at me and i don't want to call anyone out like someone tweeted

[1:45:26] at me and eventually they were like oh okay this was a joke they watched the rest of the movie but

[1:45:31] they're like oh i'm watching the child's play remake and i can't get past the part uh at the

[1:45:36] beginning where the sweatshop worker like switches the violence inhibitor switch to off and i'm like

[1:45:42] that's clearly a joke like why would the doll have a violence switch dan there is no room for jokes

[1:45:49] in a movie about a killer doll yeah i mean the i mean the real problem with that is that they're

[1:45:53] stealing that joke from the simpsons sure sure he goes oh here's the problem your doll will switch

[1:45:57] to evil yeah but i think there's two kinds of film snobs there's the ones that go around it's

[1:46:04] like uh there's a they do a podcast and shit on movies yes and then they're the kinds that actually

[1:46:09] make movies and then the kinds that don't even make the podcast there's the people they hurt yes

[1:46:12] yes exactly yeah there's victims yeah that uh the kind who get it's like you go through these stages

[1:46:18] of film snob development where you start out and you're like movies wow i love them and then you

[1:46:23] get to a point where you're super cynical and you shit on everything and you're like uh why did indy

[1:46:28] even have to go after the arc because it kills all those nazis at the end without him and then

[1:46:33] you go a little farther and you become like in roger ebert's review for air force one where he's

[1:46:38] like air force one came out the same weekend as this gamera movie and honestly at this point in

[1:46:42] my life i'd rather watch the gamera movie and like i feel like that's where where we are more

[1:46:47] is like okay i've seen it all so now i'm ready to see the silly stuff yeah but a lot of people

[1:46:52] they're not all the way through that journey and then the next stage i guess is when you're so tired

[1:46:55] of movies that you're just like books are really where it's at i'm reading meal on the floss i

[1:47:00] don't watch movies i mean it's a great book i don't know why uh i don't know why i don't need

[1:47:06] to make read a movie about how they make me a book about how to make floss boring uh so guys that was

[1:47:13] great let's go to the next segment and the last one where we recommend a movie that you should

[1:47:18] watch uh instead of this one so we can prove we're like real full-on movie snobs all right

[1:47:25] yeah exactly exactly just to prove that we're not just full full of uh bitter bile um because my

[1:47:32] because my recommendation is large door a lot of people would say on chandelier but that's kind of

[1:47:38] a little done at this point so um so i'd like to recommend easter parade which i watched on easter

[1:47:46] uh it's one of audrey's all-time favorite movies and i had uh t-voted according to my tivo one full

[1:47:54] year ago last easter and we never got around to watching i have some movies that have been on my

[1:48:00] tivo for years i'll get around to them eventually um but it was so much fun uh it's got uh fred

[1:48:08] astaire in a role that was originally supposed to be done by gene kelly but he injured himself

[1:48:13] right before the movie started and you can see how it's kind of more a gene kelly role than

[1:48:17] a fred astaire role but he's great and he keeps going up to people and going it's me gene kelly

[1:48:21] from singing in the rain and it also has uh judy garland and i realized that i actually hadn't seen

[1:48:27] judy garland uh in stuff that much before i'd seen wizard of oz obviously and i'd seen uh a star is

[1:48:34] born but this was the first time where i'd really seen a movie where she's allowed to be the funny

[1:48:41] and she's really funny like uh no no i mean like i'm you know it's no surprise like i'm just i'm

[1:48:47] discovering that judy garland is a star suddenly but she was really uh fun and it's a movie that

[1:48:54] like it starts out like it's gonna be my fair lady but for dancing like fred astaire's like i could

[1:49:00] take any chorus girl and make her my partner and then that kind of just gets discarded and like

[1:49:06] anytime it seems like there's gonna be a conflict it resolves really quickly which honestly at this

[1:49:11] point in the world why not why not have a movie that has barely any conflict and it's a bunch of

[1:49:18] singing and dancing and pretty easter hats and so easter parade is my recommendation

[1:49:23] cool uh i'm gonna recommend a movie called support the girls uh it is a like a small

[1:49:32] kind of almost like everyday slice of life comedy about uh basically focusing on a single day

[1:49:38] with a manager and the staff of a like a hooters style bar and restaurant and the kind of everyday

[1:49:47] problems they have with their life and with work and uh it's really great uh it stars regina hall

[1:49:54] who's great uh and it has a basically a star making turn from this actress shana mchale which

[1:50:01] i don't think i've seen her in anything and her imdb profile doesn't list much but she's incredible

[1:50:06] uh it's also got like dylan glue galula from uh what was that uh kimmy schmidt well it has a a

[1:50:14] star of a chris white's film it hayley hayley richardson fantastic yeah uh yeah so i liked it

[1:50:20] a lot check it out uh i'm gonna recommend a movie that ties into some of the stuff we talked about

[1:50:27] earlier it's called Rambo Last Blood and it's the story of this guy who it's so this is the story of

[1:50:34] a guy this is a story how about how my life got changed upside down I'd like to take a minute

[1:50:41] just sit right there I'll tell you how I killed a bunch of Mexican guys on my farm well I was an

[1:50:46] old man dealing with my trauma worked with my niece to dad a band in her mama and then we decided

[1:50:53] so uh so uh what's that guy wrote in the nameless fan wrote in asking about like uh movies that they

[1:51:02] should see and uh stuff like that and it made me think about a movie i watched recently that i

[1:51:07] should have watched a long time ago that i didn't and especially after chris mentioned the screwball

[1:51:11] comedies of the you know 30s and 40s which was i finally watched what's up doc the peter bogdanovich

[1:51:17] movie that is a 70s kind of version of one of those movies and i'd put it up for i'll put it

[1:51:22] for a long time because I kept hearing it referred to as being kind of like bringing up baby and

[1:51:28] bringing up baby is maybe my least favorite of the screwballs it's one that agreed connect with

[1:51:32] me at all yeah I was I was worried that that you would disagree with me on that but it's and that

[1:51:36] I would feel bad she's super annoying yeah it's super right and when there are like great I mean

[1:51:42] like have you have you seen the Mad Miss Manton with Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda no I think

[1:51:46] it's so much better than ringing up baby and it's a similar type of movie but uh I I finally watched

[1:51:51] what's up doc because i wanted to watch a movie that was silly because the world is not silly

[1:51:56] right now and i was like oh this is a much funnier movie than i thought it was going to be and i

[1:52:00] really enjoyed it and i was especially excited to see uh the actor liam dunn who is maybe best known

[1:52:07] for being in blazing saddles and he comes in at the end as a judge and i think he's such a funny

[1:52:11] actor and it was just great to see him it's got such an amazing cast in it and so i'm glad i

[1:52:17] finally watched it so what's up doc the movie that doesn't really earn the title what's up doc

[1:52:23] it's kind of a kind of a pointless title but otherwise i enjoyed it a lot i've really been

[1:52:28] meaning to watch that one too uh i maybe you're you will finally push me to because i you know

[1:52:34] like the early uh classic peter bogdanovich movies like last last picture show and targets

[1:52:41] and Paper Moon, I all really loved.

[1:52:44] So I want to check that out.

[1:52:46] For summaries, I think I've let my feelings

[1:52:50] about bringing up Baby

[1:52:51] and my feelings about Peter Bogdanovich

[1:52:53] get in the way of watching this movie.

[1:52:55] And it reminded me of a story

[1:52:58] I think I've told on this Flophouse before

[1:52:59] when I went to see a screening of Targets

[1:53:01] that Peter Bogdanovich was introducing.

[1:53:02] And he started taking audience questions,

[1:53:04] which he was not supposed to take,

[1:53:06] and ended up talking for about 45 minutes.

[1:53:08] And you could see the programmer from Film Forum

[1:53:11] getting more and more frustrated

[1:53:12] that it was still going on

[1:53:13] and they had to cancel

[1:53:14] the second screening of Targets

[1:53:16] because it ran so far over.

[1:53:18] But anyway, I'd recommend it.

[1:53:20] Chris, do you have a movie

[1:53:21] you'd like to recommend?

[1:53:22] I do.

[1:53:22] I am catching up

[1:53:24] on my Japanese classics

[1:53:26] and there's a film called

[1:53:27] Harakiri Kobayashi movie.

[1:53:32] And actually it kind of,

[1:53:34] it reflects interestingly on Rambo

[1:53:38] because it is about revenge,

[1:53:40] but it's told in a very

[1:53:41] kind of innovative way it uses flashbacks extremely well um and uh and it's really and

[1:53:48] it's sort of an indictment of samurai culture um in in the guise of a samurai film it's uh it's

[1:53:55] incredibly well well shot well told um tatsuya nakadai is uh is great he's probably he's certainly

[1:54:05] less well known than just shirame fune but he's he's amazing uh in the film uh and uh you know

[1:54:12] it was kind of my first dip into kobayashi's uh uh and and i highly highly recommend it

[1:54:19] he's got they've got a kobayashi's got a lot of great movies like samurai rebellion's really good

[1:54:26] and kawaii don is really good and tetsuya nakade i'm glad you brought him up i haven't watched him

[1:54:31] in a movie in a long time but he's in he's in so many good movies and i think i've seen a fraction

[1:54:36] of them he is so much more scary effect than than rambo uh with so much less i think you know like

[1:54:43] this guy has dead eyes when he wants to that is he can actually also play kind of quite quite warm

[1:54:48] but but mostly he's this kind of stone killer looking guy have you seen kill no i've not seen

[1:54:54] kill oh he's so he's really funny in it that's why he's playing like um like almost like a version

[1:55:02] of uh before it existed of of john belushi's samurai character in that like it's his take on

[1:55:07] on a yojimbo type scruffy samurai and like it's a really funny movie but uh that's really yeah

[1:55:13] harry carey's a really good movie i haven't watched a japanese movie in a while guys why

[1:55:17] am i not watching any of the japanese movies on my dvr yeah you should be watching them elliot

[1:55:21] i started watching you know what the last one i saw was there was what was his name i forgot his

[1:55:26] name there's a japanese actor in the 60s who wanted to look different to set himself apart

[1:55:30] so he had cheek implants put in and he's got like these weird chipmunk cheeks in all of his movies

[1:55:34] and i watched that one and it for some reason i haven't watched that put you put you off the

[1:55:39] whole thing that was like this guy's cheeks i don't know the thing is i have a big stack of

[1:55:43] movies that i feel like i should be watching but then i just go over to youtube and watch the final

[1:55:48] fight scene from yes madam with michelle yo and uh cynthia rothrock again and i'm like

[1:55:53] well this is all the movie i need all right well i gotta add that to my list

[1:55:58] well i'll this is for the for the listener earlier if they're still paying still paying

[1:56:02] attention here's a piece of advice based on what sewers say there's going to be movies that you

[1:56:06] like get ready to watch because you feel like you should watch them and but you're not really

[1:56:10] excited about watching them but you should push through to to watch them because some there have

[1:56:14] movies they're like every time i read a classic book or i watch a classic movie i'll be like

[1:56:19] putting it off for a while and then i'll watch it read i'll be like oh this is why it's a classic

[1:56:23] because it's like because it's really good like times at midnight is a movie i put off for years

[1:56:28] because i was like i don't want to slog through like a shakespeare movie but then it was really

[1:56:32] good or like and if you don't like it it at least gives you something to think about and you can

[1:56:37] think about why you don't like it like not liking something is sometimes just as good as liking

[1:56:42] something and also it may be a different experience than you think it's going to be like i had that

[1:56:48] recently with the florida project which everyone said was so great but i was like ah like it's

[1:56:53] gonna be so sad it's gonna be so sad i don't want to watch something sad and it is very sad but it's

[1:56:58] also full of like humor and life and just people that you recognize like willem dafoe

[1:57:04] well that's the magic william willem dafoe's performance in that because he's the

[1:57:10] like the one name in it and you're like you'd think that you're just like okay i'm gonna think

[1:57:15] of willem dafoe the whole time but he is such a natural presence like he's a guy that you probably

[1:57:21] have met a million times in your life like he just he feels like that he's so humane and it's

[1:57:27] it's great it's kind of the opposite of i'm right now i last night i watched up to the middle of

[1:57:32] the lighthouse and willem dafoe and that is very much not a man i've ever met before but i must say

[1:57:38] that's uh my wife and i are watching it and we're like this movie about these two guys

[1:57:43] stuck on a rock in the middle of nowhere who can do nothing but spend time around each other and

[1:57:47] have and are working all day and exhausted the other night and now they're arguing about whether

[1:57:51] they like the food that the other one cooked this is getting a little too close okay i'll keep that

[1:57:56] in mind okay well guys this has gone on a long time i see stewart uh uh looking around the room

[1:58:02] well no i uh my my upstairs neighbors are clearly like my upstairs neighbors are clearly vacuuming

[1:58:09] and i'm like oh is it too loud uh just throw my track in the trash it's fine okay yeah yeah um

[1:58:17] guys it'll be like it'll be like uh when they take garfield out of uh out of garfield comics

[1:58:23] and they'll just be us reacting to things you've done uh-huh yeah you're you're normal dan is uh

[1:58:28] is john and chris can be od excellent i love it how do you feel about that chris he's me

[1:58:33] all right i see i see myself in him uh i mean people love od let's let chris uh get back to

[1:58:41] his family also ellie get back to his family let stewart get back to charlene let's all

[1:58:46] you know just uh leave this uh podcast purgatory but you're right because dan if there's one thing

[1:58:52] i'm getting not enough of right now i've got to work on some traps some tunnels because i'm

[1:58:57] expecting some guests to kill

[1:58:59] everyone should go

[1:59:03] check out other podcasts on MaximumFun.org

[1:59:05] but mostly just take care

[1:59:07] of yourself during this time

[1:59:09] thank you so much to Chris

[1:59:11] for being such a sweet

[1:59:13] person

[1:59:14] this is a dream

[1:59:16] finally to appear

[1:59:19] and I guess that's it

[1:59:21] for the Flophouse I've been Dan McCoy

[1:59:23] I've been Stuart Wellington

[1:59:25] I've been Elliot Kalin I'd also like to mention

[1:59:27] edited by Jordan Cowling, because we always

[1:59:29] forget to mention her and I feel bad about it. And our special

[1:59:31] guest was... Chris Weitz.

[1:59:33] See you next time.

[1:59:35] Bye!

[1:59:36] Is no one else

[1:59:41] seeing this? No.

[1:59:42] I saw an emoji for two seconds.

[1:59:45] It was a crying emoji.

[1:59:47] And then it went away. You are in a crying emoji

[1:59:49] cycle right now, and

[1:59:51] your whole window

[1:59:53] is tinted blue.

[1:59:55] Your blue

[1:59:56] ba-da-dee, ba-da-da, ba-da-da-dee-da-da-da right now.

Ep# 311: Rambo: Last Blood

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