You know why John Rambo went on hiatus for 20 years before making a fourth installment? Because in Rambo III he had to be bailed out by the Afghanis. The Afghanis! I mean the sheer embarrassment of it all!
John Rambo needs no help from a bunch of horse-riding sheep-carcass draggers!!!
There's so much wrong with Rambo III I don't even know where to begin. But, let's first compare. First Blood, the 1982 classic with Brian Dennehy, has absolutely no peer in the action-film genre. It's not all blood and guts and gore, it's got something, something I say, just a little bit more. The Vietnam Vet gets picked on by the racist cop (racist against ... veterans), thrown out of town for no reason, and when John Rambo decides that just ain't right, he's thrown in jail. Forced to defend himself, John Rambo escapes, takes to the woods of the Pacific Northwest, and ultimately takes down the entire police force and army brigade brought in to defeat him.
First Blood II kicks off from a prison camp where John Rambo is, I shit you not, breaking rocks with a sledgehammer. He's enlisted to go into Vietnam to take some pictures of a potential POW camp (in return, his sentence will be commuted). Well, things go a little haywire, John Rambo's forced to rescue one of the POWs, gets betrayed by a bureaucratic fuckhead, and ultimately has to go back and single-handedly rescue the whole lot of 'em.
Now, what do the First Blood movies have in common? Well, aside from the very end of the first film, John Rambo has about three lines total. This is key: Sylvester Stallone speaking when spoken to and even THEN only speaking with his killing abilities.
Rambo III? Shit man, it's a regular David Mamet screenplay! You've got John Rambo cracking jokes - JOKES - only they're not super hilarious like Arnold Schwarzenegger in 'Junior', this is just cracking wise for the sake of cracking wise. Then, there's the fact that Col. Trautman plays a critical second-banana role whereas in the first two he always hung back making snarky comments about how the bureuaucrats should stop while they're devastatingly behind before John Rambo ultimately kills them all. This is like having a MacGyver movie and then giving Pete Thornton equal screen time; it's just not done!
But, the ultimate travesty of all is the ending where it's John Rambo and Col. Trautman standing tall on the Afghan border against the entire Soviet army. Now, I don't know about you, but to me that sounds a LITTLE one-sided; I mean, seriously, John Rambo doesn't need Trautman to defeat the Soviets. But for some CRAZY-ASS reason, the writers thought the opposite and had the Afghan rebels on horseback come riding in to "save" the day. This is the biggest slight to an audience's intelligence since Return of the Jedi where the rebels were "saved" in large part by those insufferable Ewoks.
Yes, Ewoks. They're the Afghani rebels of Star Wars.
Now, I've yet to see the latest installment in the Rambo series, but I'm hearing good things (although, I find it hilarious that the only positive review they advertise on their commercials comes from a third-rate website called bloody-disgusting.com; they said it's the best Rambo yet, I hardly believe that). From what I DO hear, from legitimate media, is that this is the killingest Rambo to date and John Rambo says about five words the entire movie. Now THAT'S getting back to basics! I'm 100% positive it won't be as good as First Blood, but if my instincts are correct, it'll be on par with First Blood II, and for my money, it'll be worth seeing in theaters.
However, I will give Rambo III one thing: it solves the age-old question of what will win, a Soviet helicopter or a Soviet tank? Tank by a savage landslide.
Now, for the biggest question of all: who would win in a fight, Rambo or Rocky? My brain's about ready to explode, so I'll leave it at that.