Rambo III (1988)
Directed by Peter MacDonald
Combat has taken its toll on Rambo, but he's finally begun to find inner peace in a monastery. When Rambo's friend and mentor Col. Trautman asks for his help on a top secret mission to Afghanistan, Rambo declines but must reconsider when Trautman is captured.
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What critics compared Rambo III to
The series’ perennial bridesmaid Julia Stiles comes back briefly to lure Bourne out of hiding, where he’s quite absurdly paying homage to Rambo III in bare-knuckle fight clubs on the Albanian border, knocking his opponents out with one punch while suffering conveniently-timed expositional flashbacks.
The story picks up as Bourne attempts to stay off the grid in Greece while wrestling with his past demons by indulging in bare knuckle brawling (a la Rambo III).
Alas, my fandom for Stallone has not blinded me to the fact that Rylance deserved the win, but I still growl at him a little because last I checked, he never played Rambo III .
Tout a commencé avec First Blood, qui a été suivi de Rambo: First Blood part II, puis de Rambo III et, curieusement, un quatrième film intitulé simplement Rambo.
Compare that to Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), when John is brought back into active service and much of the nuance and subtext abandoned in favour of explosions, or Rambo III (1988) which is essentially a grit-free, propaganda reel for American military might set in the Soviet-Afghan war that takes time to praise the brave Afghani fighters, prior to the US bombing the shit out of them in recent years.
First Blood was awesome, Rambo: First Blood Part II was fun and silly, Rambo III was passable action fare but a little tired, and Rambo (2008) was bit of a drag, albeit with some decent action scenes and carnage.
Even when he rolled with the “gallant people of Afghanistan” (as 1988’s Rambo III was dedicated), he was never anyone’s mouthpiece.
At first, Sylvester Stallone’s discarded veteran was just trying to keep to himself, but over the course of its 1980s sequels, Rambo: First Blood Part II and Rambo III , he became the embodiment of the idea that all it takes to vanquish evil is sufficient willpower, an unlimited arsenal, and a minimum of outside interference.
It’s a right-wing ’80s fantasy on the order of “Rambo III” and “Death Wish 3,” in which only a lone, politically incorrect badass with perfect aim and unlimited ammo can save us from carnage that seems like a Breitbart wet dream.
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As a character, Rambo is much harder to redeem - both personally and cinematically - than Stallone's Balboa; in the series' previous installment, Rambo III, he teamed up with Afghani rebels (Mujahedeen) to fight the Russians, which certainly places him in a dubious historical context.
And his dialogue, the like film's titles ("Rambo: First Blood Part II", "Rambo III", "Rambo") became increasingly simplistic, eventually degenerating into Mr. Stallone's now-signature mumble.
Stallone, who wrote and directed as well as stars, depicts the Myanmar military much as he did the Soviets in Rambo III, demonic figures who torture by sprinkling land mines in rice paddies and firing on prisoners who run to their explosive deaths.
Nearly 20 years after fighting the Soviets cheek-by-jowl with the Afghan mujahedin in "Rambo III," John returns to the screen working as a humble river guide in northern Thailand.
Unlike the previous three, which consecutively released every three years in the 1980s (“First Blood” in 1982, “Rambo: First Blood Part II” in 1985 and “Rambo III” in 1988), the simply titled “Rambo” exactly two decades later featured some commonalties and also broke some new ground.
…ridiculous macho slugfest attempting to reassert the '80s-style roid-raging revenge narrative (e.g., Commando, Rambo III), peppered with a dash of Charles Bronson vigilante justice, Walking Tall repackages the somehow-based-on-a-true-story kernel of its 1973 backwoods-cheapie antecedent as a glossy, noisy (man) tits-and-ammo walk-through.