Rambo series

Sylvester Stallone became famous in the United States because he created the character of Rocky from scratch but a lot of his international longevity is due to his portrayal of John Rambo, a Vietnam veteran who to date has had five screen adventures presumably as harrowing as anything he faced during the war.  Rambo first appeared in the novel First Blood, written by David Morrell.  The author reportedly came up with the memorable name after his wife bought some Rambo apples and he based the character on veterans who were struggling with PTSD.  

Rambo’s veteran status is a core characteristic of his struggles, especially in the novel and in the first film.  While audiences enjoy the Rambo films for the nihilistic joy of watching a tough guy gun down really bad guys there are plenty of mindless action films that offer that experience.  Rambo has unprocessed pain from both serving in Vietnam and then facing the cruel aftermath in the U.S. in which the public’s disagreement with the war was taken out on the veterans, many of whom were drafted.  Rambo usually tries to avoid fighting due to a desire both to avoid hurting anyone but especially to not awaken the blackest parts of his soul where his PTSD resides.  When he is killing, especially in the novel, it comes at an incredible personal cost and it is difficult to turn off.  Rambo rarely tosses off wisecracks as other action heroes do.

I finally read First Blood and took comfort in the familiar elements that were adapted to the film (Rambo's arrest, escape and return to the town) while enjoying some of the many differences.  In the film once Rambo enters the forest for the most part he is firmly in control.  There is nothing these local (and later state) police officers can challenge him with.  The book makes it far more of a duel between Rambo and Teasle.  We learn much more of Teasle's background as a Korean War veteran and he is presented as far more competent and resourceful than in the film.  Rambo's motivation for returning to the town after Teasle kicks him out (which happens several times in the book) is more clear and while Rambo’s anger is justified his behavior is so violent (he kills several police officers, seeing them only as the enemy) that the reader's sympathies are often with Teasle.  Teasle definitely treated him badly and but now Rambo is like a rabid dog and the book has a sense of inevitability leads to both (spoiler alert) Teasle and Rambo's deaths underscoring the tragedy of the plight of the Vietnam veteran.

Spoilers for all five films below:

First Blood (1982)

The first film, directed by Ted Kotcheff, while it dilutes some of the more harsh aspects of the novel, is still the best and most dramatic of the series, probably because it is working from strong source material.  At the start of the film Rambo is, like Rocky in the first film, a lonely man who has suffered a lot.  There is a real poignancy to the opening scenes of Jerry Goldsmith's score (an instrumental version of the closing song) which uses a military inspired trumpet, matched with Rambo walking alone through the Pacific Northwest.  Stallone had lost a lot of weight for Rocky III which he filmed right before this and his thinner (yet still muscular) frame makes him a lot more relatable that the much more bulky man we see in the sequels. When he tries to visit his friend the man's wife is unfriendly to him, seeing Rambo as a reminder of what took her husband.  Rambo is distraught as the last person he feels he can relate to is now gone and a little later is not in a good frame of mind when Sheriff Teasle comes to escort him out of the fictional small town of Hope, Oregon.   

This change from the book is one of the ways the story gives Rambo a little sympathy.  He is not defiant to Teasle out of an anti-authoritarian streak but because his last friend has died (and who knows how far Rambo walked to come and see him).  Teasle saw the looks of a dangerous drifter and without bothering to ask any questions just kicked him out of town.  Rambo, hungry and now pissed (Stallone can do a lot with a look), impulsively makes the mistake of walking right back toward town before Teasle has even left his view and promptly gets himself arrested.  Both men overreacted to the situation which ultimately leads to violence.  

Notably at the police station Galt (played memorably by Jack Starrett) not Teasle is the one who mistreats Rambo.  Galt sees the tough looking Rambo as someone to break.  In one of the big changes from the sequels when Rambo breaks out director Ted Kotcheff stages it as a raw experience rather than an elegantly choreographed fight scene (like when Rambo breaks free from his Vietnamese captors in Rambo: First Blood Part II).  Rambo here is acting mostly acting out of fear.  

The subsequent chase when Rambo on his motorcycle flees Teasle in his patrol car is mostly unscored, feels more authentic and shows Teasle's persistence.  Rambo does not know where he is going but heads into a forest.  Teasle, defeated in his attempts to catch Rambo, tries to taunt him like a bully.  Brian Dennehy had a long career and in the 1980s was in several high profile projects (I still think of Cocoon first when I hear his name) but when he passed in 2020 a lot of articles mentioned his role in First Blood above all others.  Dennehy plays Teasle like a real cop with a code and a sense of duty to protect his town.  He is tough but mistakenly but turns a blind eye to Galt's behavior (he is dismissive when told about it later).  Dennehy captures Teasle's determination to first capture and then kill Rambo not just because Rambo killed Galt but because Rambo disrespected Teasle in his town.

The changes in setting from Kentucky to the Pacific Northwest is really felt in the hunting sequence which is rainy.  Kotcheff keeps the focus on the local police officers who are slowly disabled by the Vietnam veteran.  The cops become the audience surrogate as we learn just how well Rambo uses his environment.  

The cliff sequence makes excellent use of the location and is loosely based on a similar incident in the book.  Kotcheff and co-writer Stallone manufacture it to make us hate Galt, who is shooting at Rambo unnecessarily and Rambo throws a rock in self defense, which leads to Galt's death but not the pilot who was trying to get Galt to back off.  The framing of the shot is immersive when the camera is in front of Rambo looking back at the helicopter which is entering and exiting the frame.  Rambo's jump and fall through the trees is a stretch (since he gets out of it with only a bad cut on his arms but no broken bones) but it is exciting in the moment.  The most tragic part is afterwards when Rambo tries to surrender and Teasle immediately shoots at Rambo from above.  The bullet only grazes Rambo’s forehand but from the angle Teasle was at I do not know how the bullet did not go straight in. 

The most shocking moment is when Rambo surprises Teasle from the brush in a long shot and holds his knife to Teasle's throat.  The cold way Stallone delivers his final line ("Let it go") and vanishes is chilling as is Teasle's release of emotions once Rambo is gone.  The scene hints at Rambo's barely suppressed desire to wage war on these people who have hurt him.   

Colonel Trautman gets a big entrance.  We hear his first line (which is filled with pride as he takes credit for Rambo's strengths as a soldier) offscreen and as Teasle turns around Trautman is in the middle of the frame.  Richard Crenna, replacing Kirk Douglas who dropped out at the last minute, has a military bearing and speaks in a confident clipped manner.   Trautman has two purposes in the series.  The first is he is a mentor to Rambo and the only person alive who Rambo and the audience can implicitly trust (though in the book he actually is the one to finish Rambo as a mercy killing).  Secondly throughout the first three films he builds up the Rambo mythos with a lot of cool lines ("What you choose to call Hell, he calls come", "No, God would have mercy, he won't.).  In this first film Trautman tries to quell the violence by getting Teasle to back off but it only angers Teasle more, though eventually the two men come to a relative truce.

The cave sequence is an abridged version of the scene in the book, with Rambo trapped in the dark and having to deal with water and rats but despite the scene's grittiness and Stallone's realistic fear it feels like a stepping stone to the next big moment.  Once he gets out Rambo could just walk away undetected but he delivers on his threat and goes after the town (also apparently killing two police officers in a squad car chasing him though Kotcheff never shows us the bodies).  Rambo destroys a lot of property but steers clear of hurting individuals in a sequence that feels like it exists to give the film a big climax but is ultimately a little gratuitous.  Teasle cannot resist the opportunity to take him on man-to-man despite Trautman's warnings.  Teasle would rather die than admit that Rambo could get the best of him.  After Teasle is wounded Trautman and Rambo finally meet face-to-face.  Rambo is filled with the same testosterone Teasle was and is ready to take on all the forces that have the building surrounded but in trying to talk him down Trautman gets him to open up.  

Stallone's performance is powerful as he goes from anger to tears recounting both the horrors he faced in Vietnam and of his struggles since returning to the U.S.  The only problem is as he tries to talk through the sobs it is hard to understand the dialogue but captions help a lot here.  It is so rare to see Stallone act so vulnerable and it is ultimately the only time in five films in this series that it occurs.  It is unexpected that  he goes to Trautman for comfort and Trautman's awkward response rings true.  Embraces are not common for these macho men.

The closing scene efficiently establish that Teasle will live as he is put in an ambulance and Rambo and Trautman walk into a freeze frame as "It's a Long Road" plays.  Since Rambo and Trautman are actually on a road the lyrics are not just metaphorical but it seems that Trautman will be alongside Rambo to help him out.

First Blood is not a great film but it is a gritty thriller with strong characters.  ***

Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)

The first sequel does to Rambo what Goldfinger did to James Bond.  The first two Bond films were solid hits but Goldfinger took a glossier, more stylistic approach and turned a dark spy into a cool international icon.  First Blood was a fairly grounded film with a lot of handheld photography and a traumatized lead character who was as much a danger to himself as anyone else.  Rambo was strong but not superhuman.  In this film he is a badass.  Rambo is on a mission and there is no internal conflict.  He is just determined to complete it and destroy anyone who dares get in his way.  I was not in the audience during the first film but I doubt there were cheers when Rambo was blowing up the town.  More likely there was a sense that this fight was really getting out of hand.  There are no such moral qualms in this film, nor in any of the other sequels.  Rambo’s cause (usually to perform a rescue from hideous people) is always just.  In First Blood Teasle is more of an antagonist who is flawed and we do not want Rambo to kill him.  In the sequels the villains are all sadistic and we cheer their deaths (though the death in Last Blood is pretty excessive..more on that later).

From Part II on the series takes an ultimately sloppy approach with the titles, always including the name Rambo to build up the legacy but in a way that is inconsistent from film to film.  Part II is designed to deliver on the promise of Trautman's description of Rambo in First Blood and seems to claim that if soldiers like Rambo could have just done their job the Vietnam War could have been successful for the Americans.  The film's plot of rescuing POWs was a common theme in action films of the time (Uncommon Valor-directed by First Blood's Ted Kotcheff, the Missing in Action series) and a way that Americans were reckoning with the guilt of how badly Vietnam veterans were treated a decade or so after it ended.  

The plot of this film is ridiculous though.  Rambo is released from prison to go back into Vietnam to take pictures of a prison camp as a pretext for a rescue mission.  However once he finds and frees an actual prisoner Rambo is abandoned and has to free them all himself.  The government, represented by Murdoch played by the late Charles Napier, a big man with a memorable voice who was in a lot of films and TV in the 1980s, often as an antagonist (I remember him playing two different roles on The A-Team), does not want the POWs found so they sent Rambo to a camp that was supposed to be empty.  The government had caught flak for not paying reparations to the Vietnamese government in exchange for the prisoners.  Rambo’s mission was to make some sort of public claim that they had a made a first class effort to retrieve the prisoners.   If the goal was to look for an empty camp why not just send doctored pictures to the press instead of going to the trouble and expense of sending a disturbed former Green Beret who for sure would find any prisoners if they exist.  I understand the parallel is to show how soldiers were betrayed by the government but the way this is handled is very heavy handed.  Notably after Rambo returns to the American camp with the soldiers at the end everyone except Murdoch and Ericson (played by Martin Kove-the evil Sensei Kreese in the Karate Kid films) are very happy to see them.

Additionally after Rambo is captured he is tortured by Soviet troops, led by Colonel Podovsky (played by 1980s Action Film Antagonist Steven Berkoff-see Beverly Hills Cop and Octopussy).  I am not sure why the Soviets are included here except to set Rambo against two different nations which is in keeping with the underdog theme Stallone likes so much.  Soviet troops did provide supplies and assistance to the North Vietnamese during the conflict but there were only military advisors by 1985 when this film takes place.  There would not have been much reason for them to interrogate U.S. troops who have been captured for over a decade since they could yield little useful information.

But all that being said the film is a lot of fun to watch.  James Cameron had originally written a prologue with Trautman visiting Rambo in a psychiatric facility to offer him the mission but Stallone wisely rewrote it to be a penal labor camp.  Cameron reworked the psychiatric facility idea into T2 where it fit better.  Richard Crenna’s Trautman is brought back in a wise decision to give Rambo (and the audience) someone he can trust.

The insertion into Vietnam (Mexico and Hawaii locations were used) provides the film’s first thrill as Rambo is caught trying to parachute out of a plane and he has to cut away the bag with most of the high tech weapons he had been supplied with.  The message might be that Rambo is stripped to his basics but throughout the film he uses plenty of cool weapons (including a bow and with dynamite tipped arrows).  

Rambo’s female ally, Co is charmingly played by Julia Nickson.  Cameron wrote this character as a male who was every bit Rambo’s inferior but switching it to a female injects some much needed feminine energy into this macho tale, especially when she helps free Rambo, which he notes no one had ever done for him before.  

Stallone is still lean as in the first Rambo (the only time he did two Rambo films without doing a Rocky in between) but more shredded (he probably added about 10-12 pounds more of muscle) and his hair is a lot more styled.  In the second half of the film after being captured Rambo is shirtless.  George P. Cosmastos is the credited director but it is largely felt that Stallone was mostly calling the shots and the film feels like it is all Stallone’s vision.

The most dramatic moment is when Rambo is abandoned by the U.S. and is amazingly not cut down by the Vietnamese troops who surround him.  When I first saw this I figured Rambo would get away but then come back for the others so it is an effective twist.  It is a little shocking to see U.S. troops draw on Trautman for the crime of wanting to rescue them and makes the metaphorical abandonment a much more literal one.  

The breakout sequence is the most enjoyable one.  In the Rocky films we often see Rocky get pummeled for nearly two rounds before he strikes back viciously.  Here we have seen Rambo tortured with electricity and hung into a leech infested sewage pit and when he is forced to talk by radio to Murdoch, Rambo threatens him before taking advantage of temporary freedom of movement to go after his attackers like he did in the jail house in the first film.  Cosmatos/Stallone wisely include a few frames of Murdoch’s terrified face, before the stylized fight begins (set to a heroic rendition of Jerry Goldsmith’s Rambo theme).  Co was right below the floor with a loaded automatic rifle so I imagine (though from the staging could not be sure) that Rambo spotted her and recognized this was his opportunity to escape.  

Some of the presentation of the scene is a little melodramatic.  Podovsky’s looks are extra intense as he awaits Rambo’s call and right before Rambo threatens Murdoch there is a lightning flash and a loud crash of thunder even though it is not raining either then nor right afterwards when Rambo escapes.  The move suggests that Rambo will be going after Murdoch with the force of a biblical storm but I think the threat should stand on its own.

When Rambo maneuvers Vishin, Podovsky’s henchman, onto the electricity rack Rambo punches him in the ribs with a form similar Rocky.  This is to temporarily neutralize him because the big fight between them is being saved for the climax.  The sequence is tightly edited as Rambo and Co barely get out by using guns, grenades, and Rambo (who moves pretty lithely for a man who has just been tortured) is able to grab and hold part of a fence covered in chicken wire so he and Co can get out of the compound.

This sequence is exemplary of either an inconsistency or an impressive quality of Rambo.  I question is he right or left handed?  Rambo throws grenades with his left hand and later in the film fires his bow and arrow left handed.  But he fires his gun (and later bazooka) right handed.  From the Rocky films I always assumed Stallone was left handed but perhaps fire guns right handed because it may look better on camera.  Either way I have always been curious.

The film briefly pauses to give Rambo and Co a romantic moment and while it sets up an obvious fridging moment (a female character is killed to motivate a male action hero to take a violent revenge) the scene before Co is killed works nicely.  As an audience member is it nice to see Stallone let Rambo speak softly for a moment and Goldsmith plays the Rambo theme in a higher octave and with an oboe to sell the potential romance.  The death itself is brutal and though Rambo never speaks of it again he wears Co’s necklace into the next film.  Co could also represent some of the Vietnamese wives of American soldiers who were promised a better life in the U.S. but ultimately left behind or perished when the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam.  The play Miss Saigon studies this more thoroughly.

The third act presents the battle/stalking sequence in which Rambo kills is adversaries using a mix of guerilla tactics and straightforward fighting.  Each mini battle scene is a little different as Rambo sets traps, stabs, shoots and kills with a bow and arrow.  There is a one on one between Rambo and the larger Vishin played by the late Serbian actor Vito Goric) which is a little limited due to the seating area in the helicopter.  I found the fight a little disappointing and a few frames have seemingly been cut out to show exactly how Rambo threw him out of the helicopter but since Rambo had one hand on Yushin’s throat and the other on his belt presumably that gave him the necessary leverage.  It is fairly funny how the pilot just jumps out of the helicopter when he sees Rambo coming for him and Cosmatos/Stallone cut to a shot of fast approaching rocks among the water which suggests that the pilot died on them instead of falling into the relative safety of the river.

The helicopter attack on the prison camp has a lot of explosions but not a lot of logic.  Rambo fires rockets but we only see the explosions.  He destroys more houses than are actually at the camp and he also somehow fires the gatling guns that he would need a gunner to operate since he is flying the helicopter.  

The finale is satisfying, if implausible.  As an audience member it is enjoyable to see an unleashed Rambo rebel against the military by destroying the equipment and put Murdoch in his place, but I think in actuality the soldiers on the base would have come running and engaged Rambo. Napier sells the corrupt CIA operative’s terror by speaking haltingly and sweating profusely.  There is an error where Rambo tells him that Murdoch knows where the other POWs are and to find them.  If Murdoch knows where the men are then he needs to get them released, not found.

The closing speech to Trautman is a condensed version of the speech Rambo gave in First Blood.  Rambo is far less emotional but more exhausted and his walk away into solitude is a good fit.

Right around the time of release of this film Commando, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger was in production.  In that film one of the villains identifies himself as a Green Beret, which like Rambo means he was a member of the Army Special Forces.  John Matrix, Schwarzenegger’s character, claims to eat Green Berets for breakfast, in a clear dig at Stallone.

Rambo: First Blood Part II is a fun time at the movies if you do not take anything too seriously. ***

Rambo III (1988)

The Rambo films continue their pattern of inconsistent titles.  In two films we’ve gone from First Blood to Rambo III and it doesn’t get much better from here.  Rambo III was expected to be a gargantuan hit like its predecessor, and is built on a similar framework.  Carolco Pictures (headed by Andrew Vanja) had become such a name in the industry after the success of the second Rambo film that the studio’s theme music was a few bars from the Rambo theme (notice this if you watch Terminator 2: Judgement Day or Basic Instinct).

Rambo III made about a third of the Part II at the U.S box office even though I would argue that it is a better film.  I find the desert location (Israel was used) more interesting than the jungle as it allows for more wide shots and it is easier to discern where people are in relation to each other.  Stallone’s performance inserts a little more humor and it’s fun to see Trautman and Rambo working together in battle.  The struggles of the mujahadeen feel more authentic against this giant force and the filmmakers seem to care about the Afghan people.  

The argument goes that the film only attracted diehard Rambo fans because the Soviets announced a plan to pull out of Afghanistan right before the film’s release in May 1988.  This may have affected it but I would also argue that Stallone’s previous two films, Cobra and Over The Top, were not well received.  Cobra starred Stallone as a Rambo like cop up against some disgusting criminals in a very dark film.  Over the Top had an interesting father-son tale and Stallone played a more talkative character than usual but Robert Loggia’s actions were absurd and the whole film is about arm-wrestling which is not a very cinematic topic.  By the time Rambo III came along people who were thinking about buying a ticket to a Stallone film may have not wanted to get ripped off again.  Also, in Part II Rambo was fighting on behalf of veterans which may have drawn a wider audience.  In this film Rambo is fighting for a group of people in a conflict that many Americans had some awareness of but were not following closely.  While the American government sent weapons to the mujahadeen this was not a conflict that impacted American society (at that time) so the urgency to go see the film on the big screen may not have been there.

Rambo goes into a hostile territory at the risk of being disavowed to conduct another rescue but in this case it’s Richard Crenna’s Colonel Trautman, the one other character in the series the audience has an attachment to.  Trautman has led an American incursion into Soviet occupied Afghanistan to provide support to the mujahadeen and his team is almost immediately killed and he is captured.  Rambo had been invited to participate but declined which suggests that if he had gone this would not have happened (which given how the Soviet attack plays out seems very unlikely).  Rambo travels to Afghanistan from Thailand where he has been living with Buddhist monks since he walked away from the base at the end of Part II, integrates himself with the mujahadeen and after surviving a Soviet helicopter attack on their village, launches and executes his rescue plan. 

History has also negatively impacted this film since Western countries do not currently look at armed Afghans in the desert with sympathy.  However not all of the mujahadeen became members of the Taliban.  After the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989 and the Afghan government collapsed there was a civil war from which the Taliban emerged.  Some members of the mujahadeen joined the Taliban but many did not.  We can only judge the film based on the time in which it was made.  The Living Daylights came out the year before and had a third act set in Soviet occupied Afghanistan and Bond also fights alongside the mujahadeen but in the context of completing his mission, not repealing the invasion.

The structure of the film has Rambo only engaging the Soviets around the film’s midpoint so Stallone (who is noticeably bigger here) and director Peter MacDonald (a late substitute for Russell Mucahley) introduce Rambo in a stick fighting contest which he wins and then gives the money to the monks.  The irony is Rambo has gone to live with the monks in search of peace so participating in a violent sport works completely in counter of this, even though in his day to day life he is doing handyman work.  The stick fight is exciting and the filmmakers capture the atmosphere in the rough bar where it is held.  It is notably a different sort of contest to the boxing fights of the Rocky movies though it follows a similar pattern (Rambo takes a lot of hard hits early, refuses to yield and then through force of will overcomes his bigger and younger opponent but shows him respect at the end).   

The scenes at the monastery are scored using “It’s a Long Road” as its main theme and the lighting is softer which helps sell the idea that Rambo has found a peace working with the Buddist monks.  I believed him when he said he did not want to fight again as all the fighting he had done took a terrible toll on his psyche and he just wants to move past it.  Stallone as co-writer revisits a theme he brought up in Rocky IV which is that you cannot get away from your true nature, here expressed by Trautman.  Kurtwood Smith, who the year before played a terrifying sadistic villain (with the memorable name Clarence Boddeker) in Robocop only briefly appears here as Robert Griggs, Trautman’s liaison in Thailand.  I was suspicious that he might turn out to be a dark character like Murdoch in the last film but he is pretty straightforward if not particularly friendly.  

Smith and Stallone have an adrenaline boosting scene where Griggs tells Rambo that Trautman has been captured and Stallone’s eyes go cold and focused and his voice gets hard as Rambo immediately decides to go after Trautman and the audience starts to anticipate what is to come.  The moment, while predictable, is so effective it overrides the implausibility of the scene.  I do not believe Griggs really cared enough for Rambo that he would have bothered to tell him without an ulterior motive.  It would only work if Griggs’ real reason to tell Rambo is to send him in (meaning Griggs walking away after delivering the message was for effect).  However  the powerful moment of Rambo’s transformation from a peaceful mindset to fierce determination sells it.   

For the first and only time in the series, we meet a real life figure.  Masoud, played by Spiros Focas, who played the villain in The Jewel of The Nile, is shown as a leader who gives some perspective to the Afghan struggle.  Rambo is moved by his words and as such earns the respect of the tribe.  Masoud was assassinated right before September 11th attacks which if he was anything like the compassionate reasonable man here is a great loss.  Masoud’s presence also should illustrate that helping the mujahadeen was not in fact supporting the Taliban.

The game with the horses, Buzskashi, allows us to see Rambo excel in another sport but also show the tribe enjoying life instead of only fighting.  The Soviet helicopter attack is devastating and is a metaphor for the whole invasion.  Interestingly Masoud suggests the tribe’s spirits are broken afterwards but the history of their culture and Massoud’s earlier speech all would negate this.  Rambo and his helpers Mousa and Hamid (who is a boy of about 10) played by Sasson Gabai and Doudi Shoua continue with Rambo to the base.  At this point the film becomes more fun and we cheer for the destruction of the ruthless Soviets, personified by the cruel Colonel Zaysen played by French actor Marc de Jonge (who has some interesting one on ones with Trautman who is older and wiser but is at the Colonel’s mercy).  

From here we get an approximately ten minute sequence in which Rambo sneaks onto the base at night avoiding traps and setting explosives.  It establishes the geography of the base (also shown with a map earlier) while building suspense for the firefight we know is coming.  The film, which for the most part is pretty straightforward pulls a twist in Rambo being discovered right after he finds Trautman and being forced to leave him.  I do question how Hamid was able to move through as stealthily as Rambo without the benefit of Rambo’s training but it adds a wrinkle.  

The gunfight of Rambo trying to escape and keep the wounded Hamid alive more than delivers the goods.  Rambo is moving nonstop and guns down countless soldiers but I felt the only over the top moment is when he pops out from under the water with a fully functioning gun.  Also, it’s sewer water but looks clean.  If it looked more authentic though I think Rambo would probably have gotten sick.

The scene in which Rambo tends to his wounds after escaping the base is well staged.  I do not know how they filmed Rambo cauterizing his wounds without setting fire to Stallone but the spark appears to go through him and he looks pretty beaten by it (for a night).

The second escape sequence is much faster.  Rambo sneaks into the camp in broad daylight (which is now on a mountain-apparently due to a location switch that occurred between filming the two sequences) and it is much less guarded because most of the population is searching for him and frees Trautman easily.  There is some additional urgency as Colonel Zaysen has ordered Trautman’s execution which makes little dramatic sense.  Zaysen has seen how dangerous Rambo is and knows that Rambo’s goal is to free Trautman.  As such I would expect Zaysen to keep Trautman alive for any necessary leverage.

The aftermath of the escape sequence has the film’s most playful moments and is truly Rambo at his best in which he sets traps and evens the odds by using the darkness of the cave to disable his opponents.  Here is where we get a sense of the field relationship between Trautman and Rambo and the trust between the men. 

The final battle is huge in scale as the mujahadeen come in like the cavalry to assist Trautman and Rambo, who are facing an entire battalion.  It makes little sense that Zaysen gives them a chance to surrender given Trautman was about to be executed earlier and the Soviets have been trying to kill them for hours.  But the build up and Rambo’s resilience is effective and I wish I had been watching this in the theatre.  I also enjoy hearing Marc de Jong (a French actor doing a Russian accent in English) say “Drop your weapons!”

The battle itself is exciting and MacDonald never loses track of the geography.  Goldsmith’s score is fitting and it is more fun to watch Rambo work with and lead others than fight an army this size on his own as he did in Part II.  The finale is satisfying but completely implausible as Zaysen plays chicken with his big Mi Hind 24 helicopter against a tank that Rambo has commandeered.  I understand the desire to end the conflict with the hero and villain facing each other but Zaysen never stood much of a chance.  It is also a shame that the plot prevented the two of them from ever interacting beyond this moment and a brief beat earlier when Rambo threatens him via radio.

The closing of the film, in which Trautman and Rambo leave via jeep was likely unexpectedly Crenna’s final scene in the series.  I imagine at the time the producers would have expected to make another one in a couple of years but the combination of the lower U.S. grosses and production company Carolco’s ultimate bankruptcy delayed any discussion of another film for over a decade.  In the meantime Crenna spoofed his character and the plot of this film in Hot Shots Part Deux and then passed away in 2003.  

Rambo III is perhaps a little too big but has its heart in the right place and the battle scenes are terrific.  ***

Rambo (2008)

The belated fourth film picks up with Rambo still living in Thailand but now a little further north in the jungle, along the Salween River now working as a ferryman (using a very old boat that he has to maintain) and snake catcher.  Although he seemed fairly at peace at the end of Rambo III he is a little bitter.  Stallone’s star had dropped quite a bit in the lead up to this film and his silly rivalry with Arnold Schwarzenegger (which probably led to both men doing so many shirtless scenes in their films in the 80s and early 90s) had dissipated. Rambo, now about 60 along with his portrayer, still has long hair but it is stringier and often tied.  Rambo keeps his shirt on and his clothes are older and workmanlike.  Rambo wears a nearly permanent scowl and in short, Stallone is playing him as a man hiding from his demons and not exactly happy with his place in life.  He is ignoring the genocide occurring nearby in Burma (the film refuses to refer to it as Myanmar) and again the effort of doing so is taking an extra toll of his psyche.  

Stallone directed this film, his only Rambo film behind the camera (reminiscent of Clint Eastwood who also directed only the fourth of his five Dirty Harry films-in which he returned after many years as an older version of the character) and claims he used an approach suggesting that Rambo directed the film.  As such a lot of the action scenes are sped up there are quick cuts, and the camera movement is a little herky jerky.  The cinematographer is Glenn McPherson who a decade or so earlier worked on the Leslie Nielsen spoof of The Fugitive, Wrongfully Accused, which co-starred Richard Crenna as the Gerard like character.

The cinematography is raw, with a 35 mm grain, a lot of handheld shots at odd angles that go right into the unpleasant jungle atmosphere.  The characters are often dirty and bloody.  Stallone decided to present this as a war film so the violence as presented shares more common ground with the D-Day sequences in Saving Private Ryan than the earlier films in the series.  The gunfights show decapitated heads and exploding limbs.  At one point Rambo saves a woman from sexual assault by grabbing the attacker from behind and instead of just knocking him out or breaking his neck as other action movie characters might normally do, Rambo rips his throat out.  Rambo also makes a machete which he uses to cut one man’s head off and then gut the leader, Major Pa Tee Tint.

Rambo movies always bring him into the action by sending him into a rescue mission.   In this one Rambo takes Christian missionaries to a village inhabited by members of the Karen tribe.  Although they are peaceful the counterinsurgency is comprised of people of the same tribe so they are targeted by Major Pa Tee Tint (portrayed by real life Karen member Maung Maung Kinn) in a horrific sequence.  Although it does not last long we see a full scale military attack as the Burmese Tatmadaw perform an ethnic cleansing.  It is the hardest sequence in the series to watch as the villagers are defenseless and the military guns down countless civilians, sexually assault women, shoot children in the chest and throw people into a fire.  Later we see the aftermath as the people’s bodies are rotting in its place.

This is a daring approach for which Stallone deserves credit, as it gives a sense of how horrifically the people in Burma are forced to live, although it runs the risk of being on the wrong side of entertainment.  War films like Saving Private Ryan are supposed to grim.  Rambo films usually set up awful villains so we can cheer when Rambo kills them and here even though Rambo eventually leads a successful assault against them, the audience are left with the memories of the overall brutality rather than the adrenaline rush of the action.

Stallone is the only star in the film but there are a couple of good character actors.  Julie Benz plays Sarah, a female missionary who in another life Rambo might have had a romance with.  She is as determined to help the Karen tribe as he is to stay out of the conflict but her decency wins him over.  Paul Schultze plays Michael, the lead missionary, with much of the same chip on his shoulder that he played Ryan Chappelle on 24.  Graham McTavish, who is now probably most known for playing the somewhat barbaric Dougal McKenzie on Outlander, brings a similar intensity (though a different type of Scottish accent) Lewis, one of the mercenaries, who initially at least had more attitude than his courage (though his attempt to goad Rambo into a fight would be very courageous if Lewis had any sense of how dangerous Rambo is).

Stallone opens the film with news footage to set the stage a little similar to how he opens Rocky Balboa with footage of the opponent’s fight.

People remember the Rambo films for the exciting shoot em ups but whether they realize it or not what makes them invested is the glimpses of humanity around him and some of the other characters.  Rambo is is disillusioned at the start of the film but Sarah’s patience with him drives him to ultimately go home and reconnect with his father.

The weight of the years of solitude is all over Rambo’s face this time.  His face looks craggy and the hair is soggy and sloppy instead of stylized like in the last two films and his voice is much deeper.  When Lewis misreads him and tells him to stay behind Rambo does not challenge him but follows quietly behind.

In the face off with the pirates Rambo, while he has his hands up, watches them and see where they have their weapons while calculating in which order he will gun them down.  Despite his age he easily outdraws all four of them even though one already has a gun pointing at him, though may or may not be planning to use it.  

Schultze uses a Chappelle like attitude when telling Rambo he will report him for shooting the pirates since Rambo just at the very least saved Sarah from a horrific fate.  

The Burmese soldiers are portrayed as absolutely venomous, although since Rambo and the rebels ultimately kill everyone in that unit does it include the child soldiers Major Pa Tee Tint kidnaps?  I wish there had been a moment where Rambo frees those children.  They are not mentioned or really shown again but the idea that Rambo would have killed children even accidentally is pretty disturbing.

Rambo’s appearance where he kills several of the Burmese soldiers with the bow and arrow is a rare fun moment, though his dialogue is cliched.  Rambo’s arrows are all more normal and now cannot blow up helicopters.

The climax of the film, in which Rambo gets ahold of a Browning M2 (after using his machete to cut off one of the soldier’s heads) is a little exaggerated but captures the chaos of a battle.  Lewis shows unexpected resilience (if he were in a Rambo film from the 80s he would probably have gone and hidden in a corner when the real shooting started).  I am not sure I bought the moment where Burnett killed a man but I saw it less as a test of his faith and more as an act of courage.   

The final beat in the film is touching without being overly emotional.  Rambo’s appearance in the U.S. wearing his old army jacket mirrors his look from the first film (though it could not possibly fit anymore), and he is walking to see his father for the first time in many years to the instrumental sound of  “It’s a Long Road”.  We do not see the reunion which might have been too much but the point is that Rambo, thanks to Sarah’s efforts, has now transformed from the bitter disconnected man to one that is now ready to go home.  After this ending I hoped he’d stay there though I also knew it would be fun to see another Rambo film.

Rambo tackles difficult subject matter in an uncompromising way but is also a little heavy handed.  Stallone‘s and Benz’ performances are both strong and the environment are well captured.  However I would have liked for the villains to have more motivation (they seem to be awful just for the sake of it).  The finale is spot on.  ***

Rambo: Last Blood (2019)

Rambo’s final adventure (I expect though as long as Stallone is alive and working this could always change) went through a few iterations.  This story used for this film was originally pitched for the fourth film but Stallone had felt that at that point Rambo should still be out in the world, which I think was a good instinct.  Stallone worked on a draft that had Rambo recruited to hunt a large feral creature created by the government, and Lionsgate even produced a poster for this version but it never got off the ground, which I was glad to hear.  The Rambo films are a little heightened, especially the second and third films, but a move like this would be going toward science fiction.  Stallone turned his focus to the Expendables franchise, all of which he wrote and the first one he directed.  Eventually in 2018 it was announced the film was moving forward with the cartel storyline.  The director was Adrian Grunberg, who made the entertaining Get The Gringo, a comedic crime thriller set in a Mexican prison.

Last Blood was shot in Bulgaria, which stood in for Arizona, and Tenerife in the Canary Islands, which stood in for Mexico.  I believe this makes this the only Rambo film to shoot in Europe.  Grunberg and Stallone, who again coscripted (along with Matthnew Cirulnick) present the film as a modern Western.  Rambo is shown breeding horses on his father’s ranch and wears denim and  a cowboy hat throughout much of the first act.  The police are no help in Rambo’s fight against the cartel so he has to bring a form a frontier justice.  The climax is a shoot out on the ranch, though much of it takes place underground and the last shot of the film is Rambo riding away on his horse.  The trailer used the song “Old Town Road”.

This film was ravaged by critics but I respectfully disagree as I find it pretty watchable and in fact more enjoyable than some of the other entries.  The nearly 12 year gap between Last Blood and the previous film works to its benefit as we see Rambo has a family life of sorts.  His father has passed away but Rambo presumably got to spend time with him before he died.  Rambo kept his father’s housekeeper on and has taken a role in raising the housekeeper’s granddaughter Gabriella, who is a sweet but a little naive girl played by Yvette Monreal.  Stallone has three daughters, all born after he turned 50, and I think his relationship with them informs some of their scenes.  Gabriela, and her grandmother Maria, played by Adriana Barraza, only see Rambo as the now caretaker of the ranch and that has opened him up.  Stallone probably has more lines in the first act of this film than in the entirety of the other four put together.  

Rambo has cut his hair which works for the western setting and also I think symbolizes that he has remade himself somewhat.  Also, Stallone was 72 when he shot this film and the long hair would look a little ridiculous now.  Rambo still has his demons though and has channeled them by digging intricate tunnels below the ranch, and he actually lives in them, which allows him to keep his trama out of the family life.  There is no hint of a romance between Rambo and Maria (who Adriana Barazza wonderfully inhabits) but they are clearly living as a sort of makeshift family and Rambo has found a peace, though this is helped with an unspecified prescription to manage his PTSD.  

The first Rambo film originally ran much longer and Stallone and the director felt it did not work so they cut it down to about 90 minutes.  Stallone followed that approach for all of the other films and as such cut a sequence from the beginning of this film, where Rambo, using his tracking skills, locates some lost hikers during a dangerous storm in the woods. Some of the effects are a little shaky but what is lost is an overall theme that Rambo feels he can protect those close to him, specifically, if there are at the ranch but outside the world is dangerous.  

When Gabriela first mentions to Rambo that her friend has found Gabriella’s father, who was an abusive man.  Stallone has Rambo tense up and struggle to use the more paternal tone he had before.  It is a predictable moment but it is still impressive to watch his softened character immediately recover his edge briefly. When Rambo discovered that Gabriela is missing in Mexico he is more panicked than mad and takes off for Mexico, driving chaotically in his truck.  

One weakness in the film is the portrayal of Manuel, played by Marco de la O, who later played el Chapo.  He is a little moved when he sees Gabriela but then claims coldly that she and her mother met nothing to him.  People do not really talk like that and up until this point the film has shown a fairly realistic family dynamic.  Maria described a moment when Rambo stopped Manuel from beating Gabriela’s late mother and I discerned that Rambo probably scared him off as opposed Manuel abandoning his family. 

One note the film gets right is Gizelle, who is Gabriella’s narcisstic manipulative friend, played by Fenessa Pineda.  She looks trashy and a little over made up and clearly gets through a tough life south of the border with an aggressive attitude.  If she really planned to sell Gabriela to the cartels why bring her to her father?  Did Gizelle know Manuel would reject Gabriela or was she planning to take her out regardless?  It would be a little exhausting to know someone like Gizelle in real life and I could see why Gabriela would go along with her since it would be difficult to disagree.  

Two of the most fun scenes are when Rambo first confronts Manuel, pinning the much younger man against a door without ever touching him (they did have to cast a relatively short actor who Rambo could tower over) and then Gizelle.  Gizelle tries her B.S. attitude on Rambo who stops her short in a tightly filmed scene in which he takes control her actions by slamming the edge of his knife into the table which is between them.  

This leads Rambo to make the first of two big mistakes.  Gabriela has been sold (by Gizelle) into sex slavery to one of the cartels.  Rambo follows and tortures a cartel leader but in his haste to get to Gabriela out he is sloppy and does not go through his usual meticulous preparations.  As such Rambo gets spotted and in a well staged sequence is cornered into a meeting with the Martinez brothers who run the cartel played by Sergio Peris-Mencheta as Hugo, the more wily of the two, and Oscar Jaenada as Victor.  Both actor have plenty of menace though are a little too one note, especially Jaenada.  

At this point about two dozen of the cartel members beat up Rambo in a slightly shocking scene.  It provides a good example of how ruthless the cartel is but is carefully staged.  The beating only lasts about 12 seconds, during which Rambo actually gets ahold one of the members but is far too outnumbered.  By stopping the beating at this point, it is more believable that Rambo might not have any broken bones and still be able to, after a few days recovery, still launch an attack on a brothel to free Gabriella.  I did not buy at all that Hugo would have left Rambo alive since he was armed and would clearly have motive to go after them again.  The only possible explanation is that Hugo underestimated Rambo but I would have believed it more if Rambo had somehow escaped.  Petra-Menchata has a couple of good moments in the scene, referring to Rambo as “Juanito”.

At the time of the film’s release I read that Rambo being overcome by the cartel was a sign of his aging which is absurd.  As strong as Rambo is he would not have come out any better had he been in that situation in any of the earlier films.  

Rambo’s rescue by Carmen, played with wearied kindness by Paz Vega, shows warmth and her overall treatment of him makes a good argument to the humanity shown in this film to people who dismiss it as anti-Mexican because the villains are cartel members.  Vega, who made such a strong impression in the film Spanglish, in a just a few scenes captures the sadness of someone who lost a family member to the cartels but is helpless because she lives under their shadow.

Grunberg shows a lot of brief scenes of Gabriela getting injected by heroin but spares us any sexual assault (we have to hope that never happened).  Hugo’s argument that he would make an example of Gabriela by drugging her up makes little sense since the public would never know someone tried to save her and also would make her less valuable to potential buyers.  

Rambo’s rescue of Gabriela is filmed with a handheld camera giving it a rawness.  It was a clever idea to send him in holding a hammer which would be easy to get and is a lot less noisy than a gun, yet still violent enough to make an impact.  One heartbreaking detail is when none of the other girls go with him as they are all too terrified of the cartel.  As no one ever goes back to them, presumably they were never freed, unless Hugo took all his men with him to go after Rambo in the third act but that is unlikely.

The second mistake Rambo makes is he does not get Gabriela medical care at all and just takes her out of the city, probably thinking the cartel might be after them).  If he had been a little smarter he would have contacted the doctor who helped him and might have been able to stabilize Gabriela enough to get her home.  As such it leads to Gabriella’s death (after a quiet touching scene where Rambo tells Gabriela what she has meant to him) which I think was the act that turned people off of this film.  In Taken, a young woman is also taken to be sold into sex slavery but her father rescues her just in the nick of time, keeping the film on the right side of fun.  By killing Gabriela the film severs Rambo’s link to humanity and sets up Rambo’s revenge.  I do not think it was necessary to kill Gabriela as the third act could have just focused on Rambo trying to protect her while getting her away from the cartel and fighting to keep his link to humanity.  As it is the third act turns to Rambo’s subsequent plan to take out the cartel, and Hugo especially, which makes Rambo an avenging angel.

Did Rambo build the tunnels with the idea of using it as a battleground or did it just turn out that way?  Brian Tyler, taking over the for the late Jerry Goldsmith (as he did for the last film) brings an exciting cue as Rambo carefully lays out his traps and practices his knife throwing and archery.

Tyler turns out to be a good successor for Goldsmith and his scores use a little more percussion and adds in a more somber motif but also weaves in Goldsmith’s main Rambo action theme seamlessly.  I especially like his work in this film, which give it a good energy.

The final battle is well edited and pretty bloody (though a little less than in the last film) as Rambo leads the cartel members into a series of booby traps in the tunnels, which is reminiscent of how he took out enemies in the first two films.  The preparation pays off as he leaves weapons throughout the tunnels so he can move freely and finish off people after they have been killed by the traps.  Grunberg and cinematographer Brendan Galvin, who also worked on Stallone’s 2013 film Escape Plan, establish immediate geography well though it is nearly impossible to tell where one part of the tunnel is versus another, though I do not think that necessarily hurts the impact of the scenes.  The budget here is also smaller than in First Blood Part II or Rambo III so the tunnels keep the fighting more contained. 

There are two details that I appreciate.  First, Rambo is wounded twice during the battle in the lower left abdomen and the right shoulder (where he was also shot in Rambo) which shows that even his careful preparations are not going to completely protect him against this many people who are using automatic weapons (Rambo also for some reason never brings a vest for extra protection).  Second, after only he and Hugo are left alive, there is still a sense that Hugo is at Rambo’s mercy even though Hugo is 30 years younger and better armed.

The finale is pretty gruesome, through memorable.  I suppose it signifies that if Rambo survives (more on that later) there will be no way for him to find peace again since it is by far the most brutal way we ever see him kill someone. I think an alternate way might have been for Rambo to wound Hugo and then pin him with the bow and arrow to the wall and just leave him there.  There was no one to save him but Stallone and Grunberg may have wanted to highlight the savagery.  

The film cops out a little here as Rambo is both badly wounded but would probably survive if he got medical care.  However if Rambo went to a hospital he would face legal repercussions for his actions and I think the events of the film have left him emotionally battered.  As he sits in his father’s chair it to a slow paced version of Tyler’s Rambo theme and it appears he is settling in for a peaceful, if painful, demise.  The narration suggests he will survive but the montage, preceding by a helicopter shot of Rambo on the porch of the past few films suggests he is dying (it is also a little reminiscent of the end credits of Rocky V which showed still photographs of all five films) points toward his death.  I think the film could have ended with that, without the narration, and the audience could decide if he lived or not but Stallone at the last minute puts his finger on the scale and the final shots of the film show Rambo riding away on a horse into the sunset.

While there is a metaphorical reading of the horse (it could mean he is riding off to the sky since Rambo had earlier sent the horses away from the ranch) that fact that we see him walking toward it to me signifies Rambo probably will survive.  The addition of this last beat is sloppy and tells me that they the filmmakers had an idea (even the title Last Blood suggests Rambo will die at the end) but lost their nerve.  

I do not think Rambo: Last Blood is a great movie by any means but I admire its strengths (the warmth of the first act, Stallone’s best performance as Rambo, the staging of the climax, the score, and the first part of the finale that I give it ***.

It’s been fun to go through these films in a post I originally planned for before Last Blood’s release.  I gave all the films three stars but would rank them First Blood, Last Blood, Rambo III, Rambo and First Blood Part II, which probably differs quite a bit from other fans of the series.  I also say that I think at the that Stallone’s iteration of Rambo should end here.  Five films over thirty seven years is enough.