Rambo III

Thirty years ago, in 1990 on an airplane ride, I watched First Blood and I thought it was a boring movie, but the first film’s sequel surpassed all my expectations. To my surprise, John Rambo hit me as an instant action classic. The rest became a dysfunction in a movie series, I guess this might have been what people had a negative view on. I guess I will always consider it fun even though it was a crazy R-rated cartoon. To begin with, I was skeptical that Rambo’s sequel is and always will be a masterpiece but after taking a glance at the film it surpassed my expectations, there was elastic action and dynamism in it, but if you thought the grenade shots were an overkill then frankly this is what I had in mind a long time.

Fueled by a disturbing combination of excitement and craziness, Rambo III begins when Colonel Trautman (played by Richard Crenna, a series regular) finds that our out-of-the-way hero Sylvester Stallone is residing in a monastery located in Bangkok and making money through underground fighting in the city. Trautman makes Rambo an offer to join him on a journey to assist the Afghani rebels warring against the invading Soviet forces but that sounds not good as per the world-weary warrior, so he declines the offer. But he later learns of the failure of the mission and the capture of Trautman and thus justifies traveling to Afghanistan to save his comrade, help the rebellion, and punish the Soviets for violence.

Rambo III makes an amateur attempt at being a gore-filled comedy with an explosive touch throughout. However, in reality, the film ends up resembling a terrifying parody instead. Rambo feels unattached from reality even now as his character development is entirely lacking. The fight choreography featuring Stallone’s character didn’t need to be set up with Owen’s memories. The character still heavily relied on overpowering, an unlimited amount of arrows, and raw muscles to win the day. The strategies he came up with for the entire movie were severely infantile all things considered. A country like Afghanistan certainly had the potential to introduce a plethora of new battlefields, but the new Rambo came up with was just recycling the same old content he had released a while back. After everything, the film which seems to up turn upside down the viewers’ expectations to have sympathy towards the Afghani rebels completely fails to develop them as real characters or even a background prop.

Almost regrettably, I confess to enjoying the historical dimension of Rambo III more than the film. I was incredibly entertained by watching Rambo take part in a piece of history understanding Rambo Usama al Shai: Part 0 was almost a single-man fighting machine that was instrumental in getting the Soviets out of Afghanistan. It does, however, make an amusing addition to an otherwise dull, overly repetitive actioner. Then, although it’s hard to imagine how I would have felt about the film if I had viewed it only as an independent unit, for example, if I hadn’t been familiar with the previous episodes. People who love this series, including other action movies from the eighties can enjoy it, though I felt it was antiquated, silly, and undeserving of its name First Blood with Bastard.

I can imagine there must be someone out there ready to grab Rambo III on release, that being said, it is not my cup of tea. As role after role changed, I found myself shifting in my seat, wishing the focus was on character development as was the case in First Blood. Compared to the first film, this third entry in the series is a weak console shooter, one that feels like playing an immensely boring and irritating video game. What’s worse for the fans of Rambo III, the only memories that I plan to cherish are because of the Sega Genesis game which I played nonstop in eighth grade for over a month.

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