I have a confession to make. Before yesterday, I hadn’t seen a single Rambo movie in my life. To me, all Rambo was was an iconic action hero I was too young to get to know the first time around. And so with his return, the question on my mind was, if it weren’t for current Hollywood obsession with sequels, if it weren't for the guaranteed box office success behind his icon, why, now, did Rambo need to come back for one more story?

Begin Rambo, Part Four. There is unrest in Burma. Everyday, women are raped and children are brutally murdered. Entire villages lie massacred—limbs strewn about fields, decapitated heads on posts, and bodies frozen in death only feet from their own homes. The massacre of the Karen people by Burmese militants has been going on for over 60 years, a disembodied newsroom voice tells us. It is the longest running civil war in the world. And from the looks of things as Rambo opens, there is nothing to indicate that it will come to an end any time soon.

In Burma, violence is as inevitable as morning. But just down the river, John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) lives as if it is nowhere near. If he just stays away from it and minds his own business, maybe he can keep it from being a part of his life. It’s not that he’s a coward or that he doesn’t care. It’s that he’s been there before. He knows more about violence than most other men on this earth. And as he has come to see it, that’s just how it is, and there’s no changing what is.

Cue a slight difference of belief when a group of missionaries from Colorado asks Rambo to take them upriver into Burma to deliver medical supplies and Bibles to the Karen people. “Go home,” he tells them. “You’re not going to change anything.”

But not one to be intimidated by a man twice her size, Sarah (Julie Benz), the group’s only woman pushes Rambo to reconsider. “Maybe you’ve lost your faith in people, but you must care about something,” she says. “Maybe we can’t change what is, but trying to save a life isn’t wasting yours, is it?”

Her words strike something in Rambo. He agrees to take them, and off they go. Halfway up the river though, they hit a bit of trouble. Before they have even gotten to the Karen village, Sarah’s life is threatened, the John Rambo we know springs into action, and we are presented with the first taste of one of the major questions the rest of the movie will pose—Is killing always wrong? Or in defense of others, to save the innocent, to liberate from evil, can it sometimes be right?

And so the journey continues. Rambo drops off the group and returns home. But no sooner has he made it back than he receives word that the missionaries have gone missing. The village that they were visiting has been brutally massacred, they have been taken captive, and the pastor from their church has brought over a group of mercenary soldiers to get them back.

Begin journey number two. Group of rough men enter the jungle to save Americans. Sneaky rescue mission ensues. Not all goes quite as smoothly as hoped and full-scale battle erupts. Bullets fly, blood spews, explosions scatter body parts across the entire screen, and, through it all, John Rambo stands behind the biggest gun of all. In the end, both “good” and “bad” have died. Both “good” and “bad” have killed. And as blood seeps into the ground and the dust begins to settle, the question that hangs in the air is—Is anything actually any better than when the movie started?

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