John Rambo

John Rambo

Sylvester Stallone

In 1984, Ronald Reagan ran for reelection. His campaign theme song was John Cougar Mellencamp’s Little Pink Houses. Even though the tempo was upbeat and seemed extremely patriotic to anyone not paying close attention to the lyrics, the words dripped with acid wit and anger. Pink houses were low-cost houses built in the 1940s and 50s where the poor lived in certain locations in the Midwest. As Reagan and his supporters rocked out, no one got the irony of Mellemcamp’s lyrics that told of an elderly black man who has an Interstate running through his front yard, who believes he never had it so good, a greasy young man who is having to give up his dreams because they just “kind of came and went,” and how the simple man pays “for the thrills, the bills, the pills that kill.” In the chorus, Mellencamp brings the irony of poverty home with the refrain, “Oh, but ain't that America for you and me. Ain't that America somethin' to see, baby. Ain't that America, home of the free. Little pink houses for you and me.” In other words, poverty for you and me.

Similarly, no one caught the irony that the action hero of the Reagan era was Vietnam veteran John James Rambo, created by University of Iowa professor David Morrell. First Blood was a criticism of the Vietnam War dressed up as an action adventure story. Morrell’s concern was for the American kids who were trained to be killers, asked to do horrible things in Vietnam and then, within 24 hours, returned to civilian life, forced to turn off every impulse they had developed as they returned stateside. John Rambo was a tragic character, not a hero. He was manipulated by our government, that simply turned him out like a puppy that piddled on the carpet, when he was of no use anymore. He was not a Reaganite hero, but a Frankenstein’s monster that spoke of the high cost of war on the psyches of young men. Moviegoers missed the underlying moral midst the machine gun fire and explosions.

Still, John J Rambo, the German/Native American native from Bowie, Arizona, thrilled audiences in three films throughout the 1980s. Not only did First Blood usher in the modern action genre, but Rambo came to define heroism through violence. In Morrell’s novel, Rambo had joined the United States Army in 1964 and was sent to Vietnam two years later. Returning home in 1967, John was trained in the Special Forces at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Two years later, he was back in Vietnam and was captured by the North Vietnamese near the Chinese-Vietnamese border in 1971. Escaping a few months later, he performed several other missions in the country until he was discharged on September 17, 1974. Suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Rambo was unable to adjust to civilian life and wandered America as a drifter for the next 8 years. It was then that he was stopped by police in a rural Kentucky town. (In the movie, the location was transferred to Washington.) The resulting police abuse triggers his PTSD. Rambo escapes jail and hides in the mountains where his survival and guerrilla warfare training come in handy. As the manhunt intensifies for the escapee, Rambo’s former Special Forces commander, Colonel Trautman, shows up to help authorities capture the fugitive. The novel ends with the town’s main street a sea of flames and Trautman killing his former underling. In a sense, Trautman was performing a mercy killing, putting the human Old Yeller out of his misery. Sylvester Stallone (Steve McQueen was originally supposed to play Rambo) realized audiences would not stand for such an ending and an American hero was born.

By Rambo: First Blood Part II, the darker elements of the character and deep criticism of the war’s effects on humanity had disappeared. Rambo was a pure action hero. Rambo embraced the Reagan mythos of the time. His next two adventures were pure 1980’s hokum. During this era, mistrust of the government reached its height. Government was not there to help the common man but was to be feared. Led by Ross Perot, one of the strangest aspects of this hysteria was the MIA movement. Even though millions of dollars had been spent and there was not one shred of proof existing, almost everyone in this country believed that there were still soldiers of ours in prison camps throughout Vietnam. Rather than rescue these MIAs, the government turned its back on them, pretended they did not exist. Hollywood did not. In at least half a dozen movies, our action heroes brought our boys home. The best of these movies was Gene Hackman’s Uncommon Valor with Fred Ward, Tex Cobb (most famous for playing the role of Ben Dover in Fletch Lives and getting beaten up so badly by Larry Holmes that announcer Howard Cosell refused to be involved with boxing again), Jeb Brown (Captain America in two made for television movie), and a young Patrick Swayze. The cheesiest was Chuck Norris’s Missing in Action. Yet, it was Sly’s that was most successful.

Now you would think that the disappearance from prison of a man who terrorized and laid waste to an entire Washington state town would have been noticed by some reporter or someone important. Bygones be bygones, our hero is set free to go into Vietnam and rescue our boys because the government needs official deniability in case things went bad. No need of official deniability on how he got out of jail when America’s POWs need to be freed. Amazingly Rambo’s muscles became enhanced chemically while in prison. After freeing the MIAs, Rambo’s next mission was helping the Taliban fight the Russians in Afghanistan and rescue Trautman, who had been captured by those evil old Soviets. With the third installment bombing at the box office, it looked like Rambo had put away his big survival knife forever and disappeared into a secluded life in Bangkok where he salvaged PT boats and tanks for scrap metal.

Twenty years later, we have replaced the Soviets in Afghanistan and the Taliban is now our enemy. So, it seems only right that as the conservative movement is beginning its death throes that John James Rambo should return to the big screen and bookend this conservative failure. With the moderate success of Rocky Balboa, the moneymen have given Sylvester Stallone a chance to dust off his other major franchise. No need to question how a 60-year-old man has the body of a Greek god or how he got pinched in Australia with enough human growth hormones to field a whole baseball team of Barry Bonds, our hero has returned.

Rambo’s mission this time is to help some human rights missionaries. Having settled down to a quiet life on the rivers of Bangkok, our former special forces operative is asked by the missionaries to take them upriver to Burma where the Karen people, mostly farmers and peasants, of the region have endured the brutal Burmese military. Once the missionaries arrive at the tiny village they are supposed to go to, they are ambushed by Burmese commander, Major Pa Tee Tint. As the surviving missionaries are held prisoner and tortured, it is Rambo to the rescue. He and five other mercenaries are heading to the rescue. Like Rocky Balboa, it is not an outstanding film but rather more like a visit from an old friend, pleasant enough, but nothing is quite what it used to be. Still, with gas prices going up and a recession looming, it might be nice to have a little entertainment. Because…ain’t that America…

Verdict: Similar to Rocky Balboa in quality