Yo, Verlaine! That
poem sucks!
Sylvester Stallone stars as Rambo in Rimbaud: Première Sang, an action-adventure film in which a young French poet escapes persecution by literary critics and avenges this persecution with surreal verse. “Yo, Verlaine!” says Stallone as Rambo as Rimbaud. “They drew first blood, not me!” Verlaine, played by Bruce Willis, sits in a hovel with Rambo as Rimbaud, having helped Rimbaud elude water cannon and the poetry cannon. On the one hand, Willis plays Verlaine, but on the other hand, Stallone plays Rambo playing Rimbaud. The production crew can’t automatically compute where Stallone ends and where Rambo begins, where Rambo ends and Rimbaud begins. One scene, a bro-mance entitled “Ram-bro”, calls for a passionate fist-bump between Rambo as Rimbaud and Willis as Verlaine. Afterwards, Stallone and Willis compare their future engagements. Willis will appear as a Jewish wine merchant, in a TV series entitled Chico and the Manischewitz. Stallone will appear on a rival network—as a fellow who suffers from gynecomastia—in Chico and the Man Boobs. “Yo, Verlaine!” cries Stallone as Rambo as Rimbaud, but the camera shows the viewer that Willis has departed. Rambo as Rimbaud holds a battered sheet of onionskin to his face. The camera shows a dirty, sweaty, camouflaged man reading verse. He is Rambo one minute, he is Rimbaud another minute, he is a real laughing hiatus.
