Post: #1

My local TV station was on a bit of an 80s kick recently, and over 2 weekends reran Karate Kid 1 and 2 and First Blood Part 1 and 2.

A quick historical background: First Blood, the original 1982 film starring Sylvester Stallone, was based off a novel of the same name. The book was written by David Morrell, it being his first novel and first published nearly a decade earlier in 1972. Morrell had no part in the screenplays for the rest of the franchise, but he did write the novelisation for the next two books (mostly because he had a clause in his contract that nobody could write any books about Rambo except him.) You can find an interesting and in-depth interview with Morrell about the book here.

Perhaps the main difference between the film and the book is that in the film (and the franchise generally, up until Rambo IV) Rambo is much more of an unequivocal good guy than in the book. Specifically, his violence is morally excused far more than in the book ... and there's actually much less violence than you'd think. More about that in a second.

And I can understand that decision being made, to be honest.

A film can only run about two hours before serious audience fatigue starts to set in, which isn't a hell of a lot of time to inject nuance and deep themes into a film that is aimed as an action film and which uses a manhunt as its setting. Films are also a hell of a lot more complicated when you have two protagonists, which is what the book does. The book adopts a rough structure similar to Jeffrey Archer's Cain and Abel and even First Among Equals -- it makes Rambo and the sheriff, Teasle, opposing protagonists who are both sympathetic in their own way, and alternates their viewpoints across the book. Reading a book -- and First Blood is a short one, 365 pages compared to the 600+ page doorstops that are current these days -- you have much more time to go back, think over implications of earlier developments, and take in the two opposing viewpoints. Film doesn't have that luxury: a motion picture is precisely that: a picture that is always in motion.

As said, there is much less violence than you'd think in the film version of First Blood. In the book, Rambo kills outright roughly 15-20 people across the course of the book, including Teasle by the end. In the film, whatever you thought the body count was, it was less than you think: Rambo does not directly kill one person in the entire film, and of the one person who does die on screen, it's an indirect killing after he lurches out of a helicopter while trying to shoot Rambo off a cliff. This was a surprise to me: I had remembered many more deaths. The greatest amount of violence in the film is when Rambo ambushes five police officers with booby traps and so on. While some of his disabling moves are violent - he impales one guy on sharp sticks - nobody dies. Indeed the fact he doesn't kill any of them is an important point in establishing Rambo's character: he has Teasle by the throat and points out explicitly that he could have killed every last one of them. It's similar to the shower scene in Psycho: you think you saw Anthony Perkins stabbing the hapless girl, you think you saw the knife plunge into her, but you didn't. Your memory has it wrong. About the most violent thing that's done on screen is being done to Rambo: when he has flashbacks to his imprisonment in Vietnam and a sergeant is literally pulling a knife across his chest.

The other thing that sprang out at me rewatching the film was Stallone's acting. It's surprisingly good, and it's a big reason the film holds up so well thirty years later. Richard Crenna -- who similarly acted beautifully, he basically was Col. Trautman in my mind from the moment he stepped on screen -- had worked with a vast array of different people in Hollywood, and he said he had only worked with two people who knew how to use nonverbal expressions to their fullest extent: Steve McQueen and Sylvester Stallone.

I really think Stallone was underrated in this period of his acting - he doesn't just play himself in every movie he's in, there really is a different character happening here. Compare Rambo and Rocky, I mean really compare the characters side by side, and they're as different as chalk and cheese. His physique - which admittedly got to the point of ridiculous with subsequent Rambo films - disguises the good acting. Rambo is not a dumb character - he is stoic, capable, and damn adaptable. It's only when you get to the end of the film, to the point of maximum pressure, where Rambo's stoic mask cracks and he breaks down sobbing. It's a well-known story that this last, epic breakdown -- aped in just about every other Vietnam War film following on, and then not done nearly as effectively -- saved a number of Vietnam veterans' marriages, that it told a lot of men still getting shit for doing time in Vietnam that they were not alone and that other guys were going through the same shit they were. And we need not discuss heavily that pretty much all of Rambo's stunts -- including jumping off fucking cliffs onto trees -- were done by Stallone himself.

The film's last image is also superb. As many of us know, in the original film, Rambo forces Trautman to kill him. Test audiences lost their fucking minds when they were shown this ending after cheering for Rambo for the previous two hours, so a new ending was done: where Trautman leads Rambo out and into custody. The final image, though, is beautiful. Trautman and Rambo are walking side by side, and there's some offscreen sound. They both react to it, snapping eyes left at the same time, and the film freeze frames and ends on that image -- as if they had both been on parade and had been ordered "EYES LEFT!" as is customary when recognising a foreign dignitary.

As said, Stallone is superb, but he's made even better by his supporting cast. Richard Crenna gets arguably the most badass entry in all movie history: "God didn't make Rambo. I made him." And then we get a shot of him in the ten entryway as if he'd materialised there. He's there mostly to lecture (the wonderfully nasty) Brian Dennehy, but you get a real sense of his ability when Rambo has been walled up in the mine and the National Guard thinks they've killed him. There's one close shot -- where Crenna slowly looks over the mound, then at the hill above it -- as if he's scenting the air, as if he can sense Rambo is still alive. It's the shot that says to us "This guy has been in, and trained Rambo to survive, this sort of shit before. No way he thinks Rambo's dead." Brian Dennehy also really enjoys himself a bit too much in this film, but he's a really solid foil to Stallone in their scenes. Happily pleased they didn't make Teasle a Korean War veteran in this film: that would've been unfortunate implications given Dennehy impersonated a war veteran some years later.

Running out of steam here, but this is still an awesome film. Very masculine, deserves another look if you have the time. Will discuss First Blood Part 2 another time.

Post: #2

I highly recommend the novel.
Different ending than the movie, and much more sensical story arc.

Post: #3

Holy crap Paracelsus. Well written post thanks for sharing.

All this time I only thought you were good for easy likes on the delete thread.

Well done. Appreciate the analysis.

I do think Stallone doesn't get the respect he deserves. He has three franchises. That is pretty fucking impressive. He wrote Rocky and refused to sell it without being give the lead role. Guy has accomplished a lot.

Post: #4

I remember growing up with a feminist mindset feeling secretly ashamed at enjoying the movie. The mainstream media at the time poo pooed the movie. Heaven forbid that a movie featured positive masculinity.

Post: #5

I remember reading the book cover to cover from my dad's book collection when I was a kid and home from school from a bad temperature. Up to then I had mostly only read mystery books, Sherlock Holmes and Robinson Crusoe.

Seeing this new world opening up left me with a ton of questions in my head, like what is the message of writing a book where the main character dies, why was there no obvious bad guy and good guy etc. A modern classic, and it's actually a shame that the Rambo name became associated with the action movies.

Post: #6

Great post on an underrated movie. Stallone's characters of Rambo and Rocky personify masculinity and the struggles men face. In fact, what is more impressive is the story of how Rocky was made. This unknown actor insisted on starring in the role in his screenplay. The movie executives laughed in his face but saw the value in his script and offered him a few hundred thousand dollars. Stallone had the balls to turn down the money and hold strong despite being broke and almost homeless. His commitment to fitness as an actor and his affinity for Russian girls was before his time. This is one celebrity that I respect.

Post: #7

First Blood is one of those great films that is tainted by people's view of the cartoonish sequels.

Stallone was at his acting peak, for someone with so few lines he gives a clear insight into the mind of Rambo. He's a damaged man who just wants to be left alone, precisely because he's painfully aware of what he is: a barely restrained killer.

The way that he holds back from actually killing any of his pursuers shows the quality of his character. He's been 'betrayed' by the military and thrown back into a hostile landscape with no support. Everything he achieved while fighting for his country means nothing to the civilians he meets, who treat him with disdain.



On the tangential subject of books changing on their way to film - Nothing Lasts Forever, the novel that became Die Hard is also much darker than the adaptation, and has an even more damaged main character.

"I'd hate myself if I had that kind of attitude, if I were that weak." - Arnold

Post: #8

Didnt know until now Rambo was a book first.

Post: #9

Wow. As a guy who was trained in the post Vietnam era by Vietnam vets your post really hit home for me. I got a little emotional thinking about how much of an impact these guys had on my development as a young man, and a fledgling soldier. Thanks.

Post: #10

(07-31-2015 08:58 AM)vinman Wrote:  Wow. As a guy who was trained in the post Vietnam era by Vietnam vets your post really hit home for me. I got a little emotional thinking about how much of an impact these guys had on my development as a young man, and a fledgling soldier. Thanks.

One of the most intriguing and penetrating conversations in the book is when Teasle and Trautman are discussing how Rambo came back from the war a wreck:

Quote:"For a colonel, the way you're talking, you don't seem to like the military very much."
"Of course I don't. Who in his right mind would?"
"Then what are you staying in it for, especially doing that job of yours, teaching men to kill?"
"I don't. I teach them to stay alive. As long as we send men anywhere to fight, the most important thing I can do is make damn sure at least some of them come back. My business is saving lives, not taking them."

This is understandable since Morrell (who apparently retains a pretty good relationship with the guys from Bragg -- they're big fans of his work, even if they pissed themselves laughing at First Blood Part 2) was really concerned to illustrate that everyone in his book was operating from particular points of view. There was a generation gap going on between Rambo and Teasle; Teasle is old enough to be Rambo's father. They're also veterans of different wars - Teasle is a Korean War vet in the book, awarded with the DSC for heroism at the Choisin Reservoir, an award for bravery second only to the Medal of Honour, which Rambo has.

But you can read this conversation also as Trautman rationalising his own behaviour -- especially given what happens at the end of the book, which I won't spoil for those who haven't read it. This is the sort of thing men who train killing machines tell themselves to get to sleep at night, but at the same time, can you really blame them for doing so, and can you not have some sympathy for this point of view given what combat actually means -- literally life or death struggles?

Morrell has said that Sam Trautman is deliberately allegorical -- he represents the system ('Uncle Sam'), the system that created Rambo. This dynamic, too, is altered in the film where he's played much more as a father figure and an intermediary between Rambo and those who would kill him -- and it's damn near canonised in the second film as well.

Post: #11

First Post Blood: Part 2

"What," asks screenwriting teacher Robert McKee, in his influential and thoughtful book Story, "went wrong with Rambo?"

The first two sequels to First Blood are not much-loved. It's another one of those ironic turns in cinematic history; Rambo: First Blood Part 2 opened to massive audiences and was one of the highest-grossing films of 1985: it's estimated to have taken 400 million in its global and rental run, a huge amount in 80s terms. Siskel and Ebert gave it the thumbs up when they saw it. But Rotten Tomatoes hates it these days, and it also earned a lot of Golden Raspberries in its time (although, believe it or not, the film was nominated for an Oscar: in sound editing.) The film was written (in part) by James Cameron, just before he hit it big with Terminator -- though Stallone (as with First Blood) wrote all over the film as well.

McKee goes on: "In the first movie, John J. Rambo is a burnt-out drifter, a kid. But when placed under pressure, out came Rambo, a ruthless killer. But the problem was that once Rambo came out, he wouldn't go back in. With oiled biceps, superhero characterisation and on-screen character merge to become a cinematic cliche."

McKee's point is that we find compelling characters who are at odds with their outward appearances. This works on us, as the audience to a story unfolding on screen, at an unconscious level. Even if we know the precise moment in the story when Rambo is about to go crazy and start knocking people down, we still anticipate that moment and we still enjoy watching Rambo, knowing that who he appears is not what he is within. We identify with such characters because they echo what we know about ourselves if not others: that nobody is who they seem to be on first appearance. This, indeed, is why James Bond has lasted forty years or so: because his urbane playboy outward appearance contrasts wildly with his murderous character within.

I think there's a lot of truth in that viewpoint, unfortunately. With Rambo, there's no real surprise to it by the time we arrive back to him in Part 2. We know he's dangerous, lethal, so what else is there to learn about him?

To me, the problem with Part 2 is that it doesn't quite have the guts to push hard enough on the buttons you can sense hiding in the film. I think it's honestly because -- insofar as you can get deep themes resonating out of an action movie -- there isn't a lot of room to move for Rambo. The basic story premise is, "Fuck with Rambo's psyche by sending him right back into the hellhole he was fighting in to begin with" -- i.e. Heart of Darkness or Apocalypse Now territory. But the problem is that Rambo's being sent in on a sympathetic mission and the politics of the film are set up as "It's good to get Americans out of POW camps," and it's difficult to show Rambo getting steadily more unhinged and then pulling himself up by the conscience to rescue the prisoners and save the day. Basically, despite the fact Rambo's back in the very place that turned him into a broken man, he acts completely as if he's at peace with the place. The problem is actually underlined by one of Richard Crenna's lines: "What you call hell, he calls home." And he shouldn't, not on this characterisation.

Here's an idea for how Part 2 could have gone and made itself memorable: Rambo, on finding one of the US prisoners and on being about to be captured by the Vietnamese army himself, kills the prisoner he rescued and goes truly rogue, becoming a predator in the jungle, an avenging angel. That would have been a Rambo in keeping both with the ruthless killer of Morrell's novel and the burnt-out kill-crazy penitent we see in Rambo 4. It would have shown us there is something even more primal, even more animal, lurking under Rambo's skin.

But there was no way in the world Stallone would have played a character like that, and no way Hollywood could put up a story like that on a mainstream screen. They might be able do so now -- remembering Rambo IV was technically an indie film, not a Hollywood picture. I actually wonder whether it isn't time for a remake of First Blood, this time in a dry, Arizona-style setting with a veteran of Iraq or Afghanistan. Either way, the above story could not have been shown on a film screen in 1985.

So most of the anticipation in the film goes to trying to figure out when Murdock is going to screw Rambo over. It's not played heavily enough, though, which lessens the impact. That's leaving aside other obvious plotholes such as Murdock's fellow staffers getting brought in and out of the room depending on where the plot needs them to be, even if Murdock has just told them all to clear out when Rambo says he has a prisoner with him.

Richard Crenna is still one of the film's highlights. Trautman's fatherly relationship to Rambo is re-established in the first five minutes of the film, and done so elegantly, in one line: "I tried to keep you out of this hole, Rambo, believe me, I did." Honestly, those first ten minutes are probably the best part of the film because they hearken back so strongly to First Blood itself, right down to Rambo's last question, delivered beautifully, with just the right touch of hopeful cynicism: "Sir - do we get to win this time?"

Another highlight is the Russian commander who interrogates Rambo, played by one of the best villain actors around at the time: Steven Berkoff, whom you will doubtless last remember having Eddie Murphy's character thrown out of a window in Beverly Hills Cop. Berkoff relished these sorts of roles, and in later years became a tremendously respected Shakespearean actor.

Berkoff was also helped by a series of camera techniques that took me by surprise: not infrequently, when characters talk to Rambo, we're plunged right into Rambo's point of view. The character speaks straight to camera and looks right down the lens, as if we were in Rambo's head looking back. It's unsettling stuff because invariably characters don't look down the lens in close-ups; they always look very slightly off-centre, but George Cosmatos takes these deliberate courses to shake us up and freak us out, especially when Berkoff is addressing Rambo with an almost-manic gaze.

David Morrell wrote the film's novelisation, it might be added. (SPOILERS AHEAD, SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE FIRST NOVEL)It was an amusing touch given how so many writers sneer at film as an inferior medium. You can sense a lot of tongue-in-cheek when, during the preface of the novelisation, Morrell simply says, "In my book, Rambo died. In the films, he lives."

Having said that, the novelisation is pretty damn good, arguably better than the film. Morrell uses discarded bits of script and was permitted to write a hell of a lot more into the novel than most authors were (or are) allowed to anymore. One of the coolest parts is that Rambo runs into the same sergeant who cut him up while he was in Vietnam - because Rambo escaped, the guy had been denied any chance of advancement and had been stuck in that prison hellhole for almost as long as Rambo had been out of it. Morrell also researched it well, too: the biggest thrill I got from the novel was when, during preparations for the incursion, Rambo basically turns down most of the high-tech weaponry he's provided and simply asks for an AK-47. When asked why, he points out -- reasonably -- that if he gets into a fight at night, the enemy won't be able to pick him out from his guns because they'll all likely be shooting the same weapon. And he won't have any problems reloading or finding ammunition, because everybody's using it. Never mind that the Kalashnikov was a fucking tough weapon, built to withstand enormous punishment and neglect and still throw lead downrange afterwards.

On the plus side, Rambo also goes wife-shopping in this film. Julia Nickson was pretty nice, although one senses Rambo dodged a bullet where Co-Bao did not in that he didn't have to take her back to the US afterward Again, the violence is not as bad as I remember it, certainly nowhere near as visceral as Rambo IV further down the line.

So, yeah. A disappointment, but still worth the watch, and won't take much of your time at 80 minutes in length. And do check out the novelisation if you can, it's a superior piece of work.

Post: #12

I'm reading the book now, after this post. I dont know if you can really accurately describe the time period and what was happening post-Vietnam USA. You had the cold war and nuke threat played up in the media, to a 10 yr old kid thinking about it and watching The Day After, just wondering where you will be when it happens, and how you will survive a nuclear holocaust. Shit I still think about that. And the Vietnam vets being torn apart in the media, and the horrors of that time period being told in books and magazines, and movies like this. I always come back to describing that time period in the early 1980's USA as dark. I remember watching First Blood, Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter as a 10 year old kid, then Platoon. What movies these days even come close to those in seriousness, of the actors and the story based on recent events? I date a lot of younger women, 15-20 years younger. They all believe in conspiracy theories and this and that, all influenced by the media, Alex Jones, and whatever. Is this their version of the cold war era we faced as kids? Who knows, its different.

To Vinman's post, these were the guys who raised us and we learned from in life and business; ww2, Korean and Vietnam vets. Most of these guys are gone now unfortunately.

Post: #13

(08-03-2015 07:01 PM)Vaun Wrote:  I'm reading the book now, after this post. I dont know if you can really accurately describe the time period and what was happening post-Vietnam USA.

Morrell talks about that - he's actually a Canadian by birth, said they knew very little about the Vietnam War until he came across to the US to go to college and started running into people who'd come back from it more or less head-on. He was trying to capture the crisis, in a way, in his book, by putting up the generation gap between the Korean vets and the Vietnam vets as the conflict between Teasle and Rambo.

(08-03-2015 07:01 PM)Vaun Wrote:  You had the cold war and nuke threat played up in the media, to a 10 yr old kid thinking about it and watching The Day After, just wondering where you will be when it happens, and how you will survive a nuclear holocaust. Shit I still think about that.

The Day After was the film that saved the world, more so than the collapse of the Berlin Wall. I really believe that. Before that movie screened I don't think many people had a sense of just how powerful and devastating a nuclear explosion was. Indeed when it showed, it scared everyone who saw it -- not just (famously) Ronald Reagan who then moved to detente with the USSR afterward, but even the Joint Chiefs of Staff who saw it. The knockout punch to that film, though, is the postscript that runs after the last image fades to black: that the explosions represented in the film are based on accounts of the power of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The postscript goes on to state that the weapons in the US and USSR's arsenals can create explosions many times the power of those weapons. They've had fifty years to work on them.

(08-03-2015 07:01 PM)Vaun Wrote:  And the Vietnam vets being torn apart in the media, and the horrors of that time period being told in books and magazines, and movies like this. I always come back to describing that time period in the early 1980's USA as dark. I remember watching First Blood, Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter as a 10 year old kid, then Platoon. What movies these days even come close to those in seriousness, of the actors and the story based on recent events?

I think 80s war movies like Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and Full Metal Jacket basically were genre killers for war films. The only film that comes close to their impact and influence is Saving Private Ryan. Once Kubrick started making war films the patriotic war film was basically dead in the water: you couldn't make something like The Longest Day or a John Wayne film in today's movie world, moral relativists would demand that the US be constantly portrayed as the bad guy or portray the soldiers as victims of the military system rather than men who willingly chose their path in life, as men of honour.

You'll find a good little passage, again from Sam Trautman, in the book. It's along the lines that "An armchair psychologist could make up some sort of theory about how Rambo's mother was beaten up, his father was a drunk and the kid tried to kill him with a bow and arrow when he fled the house one night. It's bullshit. Special Forces doesn't take crazies; he's as well-adjusted as you or me."

(08-03-2015 07:01 PM)Vaun Wrote:  I date a lot of younger women, 15-20 years younger. They all believe in conspiracy theories and this and that, all influenced by the media, Alex Jones, and whatever. Is this their version of the cold war era we faced as kids? Who knows, its different.

No, it is different. I hit 18 in the very early 90s, but I remember pretty well how bleak it felt back then. You could see it in all the films of the time, from Defcon Four to Red Dawn. Fair enough that 45 has a way of forgetting what 15 is like, but this generation, women particularly, are like the lagoon at Venice: clear, broad, even dazzlingly beautiful at times, but only a few feet deep.

Post: #14

rep point, one of the best threads in a long time

Post: #15

In passing, I've been noticing Mario Kassar's name attached to a lot of films I'm watching recently, so I went and checked it out.

Turns out the guy (along with Andrew Vajna in the earlier period) has bankrolled a seriously good library of films over 25 years or so: First Blood 1-3, Angel Heart, Red Heat, Total Recall, Air America, Jacob's Ladder, The Doors, Terminator 2-4, Basic Instinct, Universal Soldier, Cliffhanger, Heaven & Earth, Stargate. He was an international film distributor who went into making movies, which was a brilliant move since he and his partner figured out 60% of a movie's take came from outside the US market -- and he knew all the local independent distributors worldwide. He was ahead of the curve given how important Hollywood now regards the international market. I can't think of a series of producers who had quite the same record as he's had.

Post: #16

So let's talk about Rambo 3.

Benoit has already pointed out the sequels are more viewed as more cartoony than the original, and that's a pretty good summary of the third film all up to my mind. About the main thing you can say in its defence is that, as with Rambo 2, the best parts of the film are probably in the first twenty minutes or so.

We'll talk about the story and the unfortunate politics that follow it in a minute, but I think Rambo 3 falls foul of being one of those movies made by committee.

I first encountered this idea in Stephen King's book Danse Macabre, where King talks about the Jaws franchise: the original film has a single vision and a single imagination more or less driving it: Steven Spielberg, who had a lot of clout and a lot of control over the process. Compare that with Jaws 2 which was made basically by committee and switched directors mid-stream because it was turning into a pile of shit (and which switch did not prevent its shittification, I might add).

Rambo 3 has symptoms of a similar disease. The first symptom is that the script was markedly fucked with on the way to filming. Stallone's account is that the film was originally meant to be a sort of Tears of the Sun story (another not-bad work I'll have to look at here another time.) David Morrell's account of the novelisation (he got pulled in to write it again) seems to reflect this: Morrell was permitted to write a novelisation based off the earlier version of the film script. This was permitted because he kept getting so many different versions of the script that he eventually protested he couldn't write it. It's why you'll see mentions of French doctors and refugees and whatnot in that book which didn't make it onto film.

Somewhere along the way, though, the story was cut down to become a straight rescue sort of story, with Trautman the Macguffin for Rambo. Who exactly did this isn't too clear, but I would suspect pressure was placed on Stallone by producers further up the chain. My guess is that he was told to up the violence and simplify the story for the film's intended audience (young guys).

Therefore what's left of the film's original story (as said, you can still see most of it in Morrell's novelisation) is essentially a failed rescue attempt to get Trautman followed by a successful rescue attempt, followed by a cavalry charge of possibly-Taliban-progenitors and Rambo bringing down a helicopter, John McClane style, with a tank. Morrell says the story doesn't work, and I'd have to agree.

On this one, though, I don't excuse Stallone, since again there are symptoms that he had more control over the story than he really should. While directors in theory control a film, there are directors with a capital D like Brian dePalma or Stanley Kubrick who can command absolute control of the film that gets onto screen ... and then there are directors who are little more than sock puppets for the producer or the lead actor.

The director of the film was one Peter Macdonald, who up until this debut had been a camera operator that worked on Rambo 2. How the fuck did a newbie get to direct a multi-million dollar film? Mainly because Stallone a few weeks into filming fired the original director of the movie: Russell Mulcahy. Does that name sound familiar? If you're an 80s fan, it should: he directed the original Highlander, along with a lot of music videos of the time - those were the main reasons Stallone chose him to direct Rambo 3. But Mulcahy and Stallone didn't see eye-to-eye over casting choices for Russian soldiers (Stallone thought Mulcahy had hired a bunch of pretty boys who didn't look dangerous) so Stallone, in his own words, ditched his ass.

Either way, Peter Macdonald seems to have been overborne by Stallone and/or his superiors' will. In Macdonald's words from the Wikipedia article:

Quote: "I tried very hard to change the Rambo character a bit and make him a vulnerable and humorous person, I failed totally."

"I knew instinctively what was a good and bad shot," he added. "Stallone knew his character because it was his third outing as Rambo. I wasn’t shooting Shakespeare and at times it was hard to take it seriously."

These four sentences establish Macdonald as having missed the character entirely. In the previous outings, you get the sense from the filming and editing that George Cosmatos and Ted Kotcheff actually knew what they were directing and took it at least a little seriously. Rambo is not a vulnerable or humorous guy. Those, indeed, are some of the defining points of the character.

Macdonald outsourced directing to Stallone when it came to Rambo. He seems to have taken the view that "Well, Stallone knows his character, so I won't bother directing him or challenging his character's response to events."

This is a dreadful mistake, akin to bullshit authors who claim that characters run away from the story and force them to go in directions they don't want them to. In film I think it's even more of a mistake because the director is meant to be the driving force of the film and is meant to have a clear vision of how the film is going to look on screen. If your film's own director is basically just showing up to collect his cheque and isn't taking any of it seriously, then why the fuck should audiences do so? Even Michael Bay at his worst does not seem to fall into this trap: while his films are massive assaults on the eye and ear, you get the sense the guy actually gives a shit about the story he's telling.

Even if Macdonald/Stallone was experienced on directing/acting, the final result was still amateurish. Where it shows up most is in the editing and continuity, particularly in the final battle scene where either the errors got past the editor or were wilfully ignored on the hope audiences would not notice them. Rambo abandons all humanity in the sense that he becomes a superman: surviving multiple on-target shots from tankbusting missiles and then surviving the collision of that tank with a fucking helicopter. The film has a record on-screen body count apparently, but all sense of reality has been abandoned by this point.

As said, the best part of the film is still the first twenty minutes -- and that's excluding the pointless duel Rambo fights at the beginning of the movie, in which Rambo predictably gets his ass kicked, Rocky style, for three quarters of the fight and then winds up winning anyway. It really adds nothing to the story; unlike the cage fight in the original X-Men featuring Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, it doesn't establish Rambo's character or have any real relation to the remainder of the film - we know who the guy is. It just seems to have been thrown in there to give the film a different beginning to Rambo Part 2 -- because apart from the addition of Kurtwood 'Neil, you're a DUMBASS!' Smith stooging around in Richard Crenna's wake, the start of the film is very, very similar.

That said, the conversation between Crenna and Stallone is still the best part of the film, so much so that most of its dialogue was re-used for Rambo's dream sequence in Rambo IV. It talks about Rambo having to accept what he is (albeit in Rambo 3 he's told to accept he's a "perfect fighting machine", while in Rambo 4 he believes he has to accept he's a stone-cold killer). Those words "until you come full circle" come back in Rambo IV and are used to far better effect given how that movie ends.

And then we have the politics of the film. Not much needs to be said here, I think. The unfortunate implications and unintentional humour generated in hindsight are nowhere more apparent than in how the film's final postscript was changed: from "This film is dedicated to the brave Mujahaddin" to "This film is dedicated to the gallant people of Afghanistan". Irony on irony piles up here, not the least of which is that the Russians pulled out of Afghanistan the day the film was released.

In summary, Rambo 3 basically is only worth a look on youtube for the first twenty minutes and the last fifteen minutes. It's a corporate, soulless piece of work that makes a cartoon out of masculinity and seems determined to gee young men up to go die for shitty causes overseas.

Post: #17

Rambo IV.

It’s rare that a movie franchise can come back off a shit entry. Generally it’s one bad movie and the series is over. Even durable franchises like James Bond have to reinvent themselves now and then. And despite the nostalgia kick on in Hollywood, it’s harder still to bring back franchises many years after their last entry.

Rambo manages to pull it off. And does it in no small ways due to Stallone, due to his presence, his charisma, and his skills as writer and actor. Rambo IV is the second-best film in the franchise, right behind the original First Blood.

And it’s such a good entry because it focuses back on the main character, back on Rambo. David Morrell’s praise for that aspect of the film is significant: he says it’s the first time the tone of the character matches what he imagined in his original novel. Rambo in this film is burnt-out, bitter, but still a killer who hates himself because he likes killing and is very, very good at it. Stallone’s command of the character is also superb, bringing all of Rambo’s stoic character back with twenty years of acting experience to power it. It helps that it’s the same actor, of course, but you can really believe this is the same guy we met back on a dusty road in the Pacific Northwest back in 1982. Stallone’s own appearance contributes to the character: most of the time Rambo’s face looks more like it’s been carved from rock, it’s positively craggy, like the statue of a god of war.

The series gets all of its component parts working in harmony for the first time in twenty years and serving the story. As an example, consider the setting. In a way, it’s actually Rambo’s head that is the setting. Rambo is living on the Burmese border, not many miles from the slaughter going on up the river, still living in the middle of the jungle. This in itself is a wonderful comment on the character. Rambo emotionally is still living in Vietnam, even thirty years later. He’s living in a primal, merciless place, and still on the border between peace and war. He copes by a stoic lifestyle and he works as a blacksmith, hammering away stoically at life to keep that part of himself locked away. It rains a lot in the film, and Rambo spends a lot of time in that rain and smeared with mud. Perhaps it’s a metaphor for the blood he’s bathed in during his life … or maybe it’s just Rambo reflecting on Macbeth:

Quote: Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.

Next, consider the violence, amped up to realistic levels for the first time. The final battle sequence features Rambo getting hold of a .50 cal anti-aircraft gun and turning it on a few platoons of Burmese troops. The results are visceral and confronting: people are literally chopped in half by machine gun fire, heads explode, blood flies, intestines fall out like coils of rope, bodies are torn apart. But you don’t have to look far for verification from former servicemen that these are pretty accurate representations of what these sorts of weapons do. It’s violence not for its own sake, but for a real, powerful narrative purpose.

Narrative purpose: because that final battle scene is actually a masterpiece in narrative terms. It’s the climax of the film, and we are reminded that climaxes are that point of the film where all the themes and arguments presented earlier are restated and left for us to consider. This the film does:

(1) The theme that combat is the work and bane of men. Earlier in the film, Rambo has a low, whispering growl on the nature of war: “But it’s not your country that asks you. It’s a few men, at the top, who start wars. The old men start it, the young men fight it.” (Note the callsign of the sniper mercenary character of the film: it’s School Boy). Sarah, the only female character in the film, argues in terms of peace and civilisation and helping others, but the words all fall dead and hollow on screen. Sarah is directly at threat of being raped during the film, something Rambo snarls at her openly. And she spends most of that final battle scene cowering in a foxhole with her hands over her ears against the thunder of the .50 cal, screaming in fear while around her men fight, are wounded, and die, in part to protect her. It’s a powerful restatement of gender themes, even more powerful when the film skips the expected and tired cliché of turning Sarah into a love interest and instead makes her the walking argument for peace and civilisation.

(2) The theme that violence rests shallow under the surface of men, and it’s not hard to bring it out. Earlier in the film Rambo’s monologue while he constructs his knife is straightforward: “You didn’t kill for your country. You killed because you liked it. When you’re pushed, killing is as easy as breathing.” The knife, too, serves this theme: no beautiful crafted work this time, it’s an evil-looking, primitive bit of sharpened, bent metal that is seared red-hot and made to cut people in half. And in the final battle scene, one of the missionaries, Michael (played masterfully by Justin Schulze) has to fight for his life and brains a Burmese soldier with a rock. We’re taken through closeups as Michael does this, and we see both the primitive fury on his face as he does the deed and then the subtle remorse and satisfaction when it’s all over. The scene becomes a true slaughterhouse and the violence amps up at this point.

(3) That civilians do not appreciate either what military men do or what they go through to cope with it. The cinematic release of the film features Rambo pointing an arrow at close range. This is from a scene in the film, the same scene – the same shot – as perhaps the film’s most notable quote: ”Ain’t any one of us here wouldn’t rather be someplace else. But this is what we do. Who we are. Live for nothing, or die for something.” The shot, however, is close enough and Stallone’s eyeline close enough to the camera that he’s really speaking to the audience, not the other characters. We see this same theme again in the immediate aftermath of the battle, when Sarah and Michael are looking up at Rambo on the ridge. Rambo says nothing. He neither exults nor cries, neither takes in pleasure nor is horrified by what he’s done. We immediately think “Rambo has seen things like this so many times before, and yet he still continues on.” So does every combat veteran. In that one shot all of the themes merge in Rambo’s character, in that simple, lingering shot of him standing there looking at what he’s done. And the scene is also a sort of redemption for Rambo, too, a moment where we sense in some way that he has moved on from where he was.

The film is a wonderful scavenger of material from the earlier films. Indeed it makes better use of Rambo 3’s “Until you come full circle” dialogue in Rambo’s dream sequence. This wonderful black and white montage includes flickering shots and glimmers from every other Rambo film – including the deleted ending of First Blood where Rambo kills himself with Trautman’s gun. Richard Crenna’s voice echoes out, as if from the grave: “You’ll always be eating yourself up until you accept what you are. Until you come full circle.”

And that circle closes, of course, on the final scene of Rambo IV, which intentionally mirrors the opening scene of First Blood. Rambo is walking down a dusty road … but not to his dead friend’s house, but rather to a house that has his surname on it. We are invited to consider whether Rambo has indeed come home at last. It’s also one of the few moments throughout the entire series that Rambo actually smiles – in First Blood that only happens once, when he first looks down on Delmar Barry’s house. It’s also significant that Rambo looks back at the road he’s come down and then proceeds down the farm driveway; in the original film, before he makes the decision to go back into town and push back on Teasle, Rambo also looks up the road away from town, and then turns back into town.

Has the circle closed? Is this the final Rambo film? Probably not, given Stallone is apparently making a fifth and possibly final film, but this would serve beautifully as a final chapter too, a great bookend to the series. My heart tells me that the series won’t truly be over until Rambo dies, until audiences are prepared to accept the ending that Morrell had in mind for the character all those years ago, but Rambo IV is a touching, visceral film that is well worth a viewing.

Post: #18

Rambo (IV) is almost a callback to the nihilistic revenge films of the 70s and 80s, mixed with hints of the modern cynical world view.

The character himself reverts to the primal force seen in First Blood - no longer an action hero, he is again the grim killer, taking no satisfaction in winning battles but feeling at peace during conflict when his true nature can be freed.


There are parallels between John Rambo and the character of The Punisher from the comics. Both are men who have don't fully exist outside a confrontation, and both are driven to put themselves in harm's way in order to protect others, with it never being clear if it is motivated by altruism, or a death wish.

The Punisher existed before the first Rambo film, but only in outline. The trauma of Vietnam was woven into his back story in the years following First Blood, and there's no great stretch to say that they drew inspiration from the damaged heroes of that time.

"I'd hate myself if I had that kind of attitude, if I were that weak." - Arnold

Post: #19

The only part of Rambo IV that remotely resembled the excesses of III was a single claymore going off like a miniature nuke and flattening a huge swathe of forest.

Somehow, watching Rambo using the mounted gun to turn wave after wave of attackers into bloody pulp was not excessive and gratuitous in the same way.

"I'd hate myself if I had that kind of attitude, if I were that weak." - Arnold

Post: #20

(08-07-2015 08:26 AM)Benoit Wrote:  There are parallels between John Rambo and the character of The Punisher from the comics. Both are men who have don't fully exist outside a confrontation, and both are driven to put themselves in harm's way in order to protect others, with it never being clear if it is motivated by altruism, or a death wish.

The Punisher existed before the first Rambo film, but only in outline. The trauma of Vietnam was woven into his back story in the years following First Blood, and there's no great stretch to say that they drew inspiration from the damaged heroes of that time.

I liked one scene in Marvel Civil War, which featured a meeting between Captain America and the Punisher. Somebody observed about them: same man, different war.

Post: #21

(08-09-2015 09:14 AM)Paracelsus Wrote:  

(08-07-2015 08:26 AM)Benoit Wrote:  There are parallels between John Rambo and the character of The Punisher from the comics. Both are men who have don't fully exist outside a confrontation, and both are driven to put themselves in harm's way in order to protect others, with it never being clear if it is motivated by altruism, or a death wish.

The Punisher existed before the first Rambo film, but only in outline. The trauma of Vietnam was woven into his back story in the years following First Blood, and there's no great stretch to say that they drew inspiration from the damaged heroes of that time.

I liked one scene in Marvel Civil War, which featured a meeting between Captain America and the Punisher. Somebody observed about them: same man, different war.

There was actually a What If? comic where Punisher became Captain America.

Post: #22

(08-07-2015 09:07 AM)Benoit Wrote:  The only part of Rambo IV that remotely resembled the excesses of III was a single claymore going off like a miniature nuke and flattening a huge swathe of forest.

Somehow, watching Rambo using the mounted gun to turn wave after wave of attackers into bloody pulp was not excessive and gratuitous in the same way.

If I remember correctly, didn't Rambo place the claymore onto an old British Tallboy bomb? Those bombs weighed like 12000 pounds and were pretty devastating in WW2.