When you've labored a 70-hour work week in the paper shuffling business, there's only one thing a true red-blooded American man should do come Saturday: drink beer and watch the Rambo trilogy. Viewing the first three Rambo flicks in a row is like an adrenaline shot to the testes. Football doesn't compare. And I'll be goddamned if I wasn't ripping phone books in half and chewing raw meat after my Rambo marathon.

I'm not 100% sure why I bought the Rambo trilogy. Maybe to prepare for the upcoming fourth assault of John J. Rambo, simply titled Rambo. Or just maybe I had an unquenchable thirst for commie blood this weekend. I don't know. All I know is that 15 bucks for three DVDs sealed the deal and it was go time.

I had never seen the first two Rambo flicks (First Blood and Rambo: First Blood Part II) from beginning to end without television censors cutting all the fun stuff. For some reason or another when I was 10 or 12 I fixated upon Rambo III and played it on loop for an entire summer. Although it never occurred to me to rent the other two movies and witness John Rambo's entire arc from Nazi-cop/Brian Dennehy brutalizer to Afghan freedom fighter.

Maybe it's been some time since you've had a date with the Rambo movies, so let me waft the fog away from your memory. We meet John J. Rambo in First Blood as a Vietnam vet drifting through small town Colorado. Next thing some fascist cops arrest Rambo and try to shave his face and hack off his beautiful mullet. Well, Rambo doesn't take kindly to any man touching his mullet so he goes ape shit and terrorizes the police force using guerilla warfare for the remaining running time. However, in case you thought this was 96 minutes of bullet propelling, the film hammers in a political message about America's lame-ass treatment of Vietnam vets.

Rambo: First Blood Part II opens with Rambo doing hard-labor prison time for shooting off Dennehy's kneecaps. His ex-commander stops by and recruits him for a mission to search and rescue possible American POWs still in Vietnam. Then Rambo flies out to 'Nam and kills everything Asian (excluding, of course, his hot Asian sidekick) or a Russian accent. The movie is both an F.U. to the bureaucracy that mismanaged the Vietnam War and a catharsis for those upset about losing the war as Rambo goes over there a second time and kicks ass until Charlie says uncle. As Roger Ebert noted in his review, if the bureaucrats had let Rambo get his kill on during the war like he does here, then the man would have won the war single-handedly.

Rambo III doesn't concern itself with Vietnam. It's all about perishing Russians in the Soviet-Afghan War (just made famous again in Charlie Wilson's War). However, the film starts with Rambo living in a Buddhist monastery. It appears as long as Rambo donates money from his occasional stick fight death matches to the monks, they in return provide him peace, shelter, and an endless supply of blue jeans. Yet, Rambo's ex-commander gets himself captured by the Soviets, so it's up to Rambo to enter Afghanistan and free him—which means snuffing anybody who has the slightest doubts about almighty power of capitalism. Here the political message is simple: All Soviets must die.

This is the quintessential film trilogy of the '80s. From Sylvester Stallone's 98 ab muscles glistening with sweat to blowing up commies via freaking arrows. The films radiate the shallow politics and excessive style of the 80s to the hilt and I love it. However, it's been 20 years since Rambo blew a hole through a Russkie with his stare alone. The Berlin Wall is rubble. Russia is our friend. Mullets are outlawed in all 37 states. And Rambo's buddies in Rambo III are now our enemies. Do we really need a Rambo movie in the 21st century?

I understood why Stallone made Rocky Balboa. Money. Okay, other than money, Rocky is a legit character deserving of a conclusion better than Rocky V. And Stallone succeeded wildly in telling that story. However, Rambo has never really felt like a true multi-faceted character. As describe in 20 different ways throughout the trilogy, he's a pure killing machine. He's a terminator with a big knife and a bigger mullet. He'll slit your throat first and then mumble to you. Rambo III is as good as an ending as any.

Of the footage I've seen from Rambo, the film appears to deliver ludicrous amounts of squibs exploding from Burmese baddies (I guess Rambo still enjoys a good war with Asian folk). And after catching the flick this Friday, who knows, I might flip a car over and rampage through the woods naked while hunting deer with my bare hands.

But probably not.

I can't stop feeling that John J. Rambo is best left as a relic of '80s anti-communism propaganda, a campfire boogeyman tale communists would scare their kiddies with. Rambo should be loved out of nostalgia for a stupider time in movies and only brought out on Saturdays with a 12-pack of brew and hunger to get in touch with your manliness. If Rambo touches upon the idea of its title character belonging to a time period long gone, then maybe the movie might win me over. Otherwise seeing a sagging, overweight Stallone corpsify Asians in his sixties comes off as sad and embarrassing when there's no irony attached.

For your fill of Rambo goodness, including an R-rated promo trailer, click here.

Related post categories: Editorials, Features, The Shallow End : Rambo

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