Rambo has to be the most famous homeless character in film. And as such, he has a special place in my heart. Though our origins are completely opposite, we both ended up in the same place. He comes back from Nam a highly skilled, transcendental person only to find the bubble world of America has no place for him. When America in all her righteous fury condemns this unproductive wanderer, Rambo fights back. God, I loved that! Take out all the fuckers, Rambo! I got no use for them either.
"First Blood" the film is one of my all time favorite guilty pleasures. So I decided to hunt down the book which I had heard was far more hardcore. This gave me cause to do my own Rambo posting, inspired by the book. Author David Morrell truly painted scenes of tragedy of a life lost to torment. I emailed Morrell at that time to share my humble take on Rambo. When on his website, I saw he gave a favorable review to Rambo IV, which I did not expect. My reaction was different than his as you can see from our exchange below:
Hey David, just wanted to bend your ear a minute on the latest Rambo movie.
I wasn't going to see it because I figured it was a Rambo II redux as just another vehicle for violence. But since you gave it a thumbs up I went ahead and gave it a shot. One thing's for sure, you were right about the amount of violence. What made it more brutal was the fact these things truly do go on. Killing soldiers such as those Burmese troops is not really killing them - they are already dead. It would be, in fact, doing them a favor to keep them from digging themselves further into a hole. But that's not what I found disappointing in the film.
Surprisingly - maybe because I was expecting the worst - I was glad to see the film did not go insanely overboard on violating the "Zatoichi Principle" (no one man can save the world, it's up to the world to save the world). The way the movie started I was wincing in that Rambo was going to "fix" all of Burma and set things straight. So that turned out to be cool but what I didn't like was that the rhetoric didn't match the action. I'd of re-written it to have Rambo at his father's farm in the beginning. But because he truly "is war" and has to "face what he is", he can have no home of tranquility. Now that's a person damaged for life. After he completes the mission, he stays in Asia, always close to war and living in a twilight world between life and death. That would truly send the message: war doesn't fix you up, it fucks you up (the opposite of the message it sends now). But hey, few American filmmakers are going to have the balls to go against war.
I don't know if I would have had the strength to resist in the 60's but I do know I always related to Rambo's stubborn streak and his feeling of being out of place in the sheltered world of America. So I was frustrated by what I saw as a missed opportunity for this film to say something truly meaningful about a character in which I am vested.
Please bear in mind, ALL this is completely IMHO.
Morrell replied:
Harry, two years ago Sly phoned me to discuss the new film. I wasn't involved with it. He just wanted to talk. He said that he wanted to depict the violence in a realistic manner so that the shock of the audience would give them some idea of what it could do to someone who was steeped in it. Basically the character is burned out. The telling line of dialogue is, "I didn't kill for my country. I killed for myself. And for that, God won't forgive me." In essence, he's admitting that he's only good at one thing and hates himself for it. The final gun battle goes on and on and on and on. That's the point. It builds graphically until the ugliness of it overwhelms us. Rambo stands at the top of a hill, looking down at all the pain and grief and death. He just stands there and stands there. Something happens to his face, and he walks offscreen to the left. I suspect that Sly is trying to communicate that the character finally came through the other side of hell, that he has reached absolute bottom and has nowhere to go but up, which is why the film ends with him returning home, wearing the same clothes that begin the first film.
The character presented in this movie is very much like the character in my novel, the first time he's really been on screen.
Stubborn me replied:
Thanks for the reply. And I agree what you state below is the stated intent of the filmmakers. I LOVE the idea of a self-loathing and self-examining Rambo. The rhetoric was fine, I just wanted to see the price one has to pay for killing for yourself. In the book, Rambo pays. To me, hitting bottom means putting a bullet through your head. That would have been a unique ending too! I didn't walk out of the theater with a sense of tragedy as in "All Quiet on the Western Front" or "Men with Guns". I felt Rambo IV preserved the myth of war. At the end of the book I was saying, "Damn, what a shame. What a waste. I wanted to know that guy." At the end of this film I only felt dirty. I'm well aware of the tact of showing the violence of war as an anti-war statement. However, it just doesn't wash. The ending of Bambi invokes more outrage against violence than watching an endless series of soul-less CGI soldiers being ripped apart. One brings pain and the other desensitizes pain. There's a Chinese proverb that says the opposite of good is good intentions. I never look at what filmmakers intend, only what they do. That's what we all get judged on in the end.
So I give an "A" for the idea and an "F" for execution. I just would have so dearly loved to have seen the look on the faces of all the "Rambo is a badass!" cheerleaders as Rambo eats a bullet as a solution to his PTSD. That would have given them something to think about :)
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