Logic tells me that, if you make too many sequels, eventually you will suck the life blood of the franchise dry. So I wasn’t surprised when almost every conversation I had about Rambo IV, simply titled Rambo, was accompanied with laughter and derision. The strange thing was, I wasn’t the one laughing. For whatever misguided reason, I was holding out a good deal of hope for this particular sequel. I had no logical reason to, as almost every sequel last year was a complete and utter failure in every way that something you paid $9 for can be an utter and complete failure.

I suppose I can’t reconcile the fact that I’m living my life as both a realist and an optimist. But then again logic never really entered into my love of film, it was simply a love that no amount of explanation or analysis was ever going to change. And like the proverbial sheep to the slaughter, I walked into Rambo hoping for the best.

And thank God I did, for I was witness to one of the finest badass action films in the last couple years, if only on the basis that it was simultaneously one of the most violent mainstream action flicks I have ever seen. I’m talking blood by the bucketfuls. Decapitation. Mutilation. Dismemberment. And plain old fashioned gore for the sake of gore.

What’s more, in a stroke of directorial genius Sylvester Stallone couches the Burmese setting in a very real, very moral vacuum. This isn’t “nondescript jungle #42” that exists purely as a place for Rambo (Stallone) to blow the hell up. This is a land of famine, pestilence and death. The film opens with a hodgepodge of news reels on the Burmese conflict and its place on the international stage. Then it cuts to a scene of soldiers throwing mines into a lake and racing captured villagers through it to see who blows up first.

Visceral and brutal only begin to describe it, and it’s this setting that keeps Rambo from ever feeling like a ridiculous Hollywood blockbuster, even from feeling mindlessly cruel. Seriously, most horror and war films are like two-hour tutorials on cake baking compared to this very literal bath of blood. The Los Angeles Times did the math, and it’s 2.39 kills per minute.

But for those unfamiliar with his story, John Rambo was a Vietnam draftee who suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and, after being hated and beaten upon his return to America, he retreats into the Burmese jungles to live a nondescript life as a riverboat man. Christian missionaries, played by Dexter‘s” Julie Benz and 24‘s Paul Schulze, hire Rambo to take them upriver into military territory, against his warnings. They get captured and Rambo, after some soul-searching, decides to go after them.

Stallone, now fully comfortable as his classic character, plays the role flawlessly. However Benz and Schulze’s performances, which are for the characters we’re supposed to feel fairly sympathetic towards, are wooden and betray little of the spiritual passion their characters regularly expound upon. Thankfully, they’re pretty tight-lipped after they get captured. Rambo also joins up with a small contingent of mercenaries along the way, but they stay out of Rambo’s swath of destruction for the most part and have refreshingly unique personalities.

While I miss the human and extremely vulnerable, yet equally volatile, Rambo from the first film, his current iteration is in line with his disconnection from the rest of the world. Also, as in Rocky Balboa, Stallone is asking you to get up and do something with your life, to learn to have faith in something. Even muscular badasses need something to believe in.Rambo is still the journey of one man, so the larger world issues the film surrounds itself with are secondary to the personal journey at the movie’s core. The ending is sudden and not well established, but to fans of the first film it’s a warm love letter.

And when the smoke clears, and if you’re a good little Generation Y member like myself, you’ll be so desensitized you can’t help but giggle a little when Rambo cuts someone’s head off. And that’s what it’s all about.