RAMBO [R]

Dear Mr. Stallone:

I just saw your latest First Blood movie, and I’m happy to report that I liked it. It won’t make my Top 10 list or anything, but it affected me enough to recommend it. I say “affected” and not “entertained,” because frankly, the violence tripped me up. And I say “tripped up,” not as a dis, but as a compliment.

Nobody goes to see a Rambo movie and doesn’t expect violence. I just didn’t expect to feel it the way I did about it. Without turning it into a spoof like Hot Shots, you, to allude to another of your recent dark horse sequels, Rocky Balboa, pack a punch with the intense, bloody violence. At first, it seemed almost comical, but as I realized how there was no amount of tongue-in-cheek intended, I sobered up quickly. I sobered up to the point that I became increasingly more upset with each well-orchestrated action sequence. That was the point, right, to be paralyzed by it, like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange, made to feel a repulsion to “ultra-violence”?

Thank you, also, for keeping the time period vague, even if by calling Myanmar by its original Burma, we can place it sometime in the ‘90s. Not miring this rescue story in politics will go a long way in making Rambo feel fresh and relevant a decade from now. I’m sure not a lot of people revisit Rambo: First Blood Part II and Rambo III with the same anti-Soviet, in-the-moment jingoistic fervor they did when they you made them in the ‘80s (the very effective flashback you culled from them was plenty). Plus, to be honest, they were kind of lame and empty. Not so here. This one has some meat on it.

Like with your Rocky movies, someone unfamiliar can start with the first one, skip over the ones in the middle and finish up with this last entry and still get the point. Your point about not being able to change a man’s character was not lost, though perhaps a little oversimplified. I did get, though, that John Rambo was a good man before the U.S. government turned him into a killing machine, and while I liked the sweet way you ended it (though I thought that licensing the “walking away” music from “The Incredible Hulk” would have been a nice touch), doing what the Dirty Harry and Lethal Weapon franchises haven’t had the balls to do – killing off their protags –would have been big of you. Perhaps that’ll be a bonus feature on this spring’s DVD release?

Anyway, thank you for having the guts to endure the scorn by those who might think you finished. There has never been any question in my mind that you have talent; now you’ve reached an age where the wisdom you’ve accrued has started to temper it in a good way. Here’s hoping that you can continue to reinvent yourself, like Eastwood did, and find a way to continue to do what you love into your 60’s and beyond.

Sincerely (and without tongue-in-cheek),
Robert Newton