Rambo III (1988)

Brief Primer:

There is a movie after Rambo: First Blood Part II. Rambo's only friend/father figure/CO Trautman (Richard Crenna, reprising his role from the previous 2 films) is captured (for some reason?) by Soviets in Afghanistan. Rambo has to go rescue him, with the help of some Mujahideen.


Alright, let's talk about the franchise first: Some people are under the misguided impression that the first Rambo movie (First Blood) is anything less than fantastic. Others are on the right track, and like it like people should. The follow up (part II) is not as good, and I don't want to talk about it. Rambo III falls somewhere in between. Part of what made the first Rambo so awesome was its simplicity: a sad guy shows up in town, gets messed with, flips out, and burns everything to the ground. You don't have to have PTSD to relate to that - everyone wants to revenge on stuff. The second movie got caught up in some bullshit about the U.S. Government not wanting to rescue POW's still in Vietnam or something, paired Rambo up with some woman who falls in love with him before getting blown away (spoiler alert, whatever, don't see Rambo 2), and was an all-around disappointment.

Conversely, Rambo 3 is awesome in the exact way that LBJ wasn't: it 1) doesn't spend much time in Vietnam, 2) gets Rambo out of Vietnam, and 3) shuts the hell up about Vietnam immediately afterwards. Instead, we're treated to Rambo dropping into sunny and jungle-less Afghanistan to help out the freedom-fighting, Soviet-disliking Afghan people we as a country would, 13 years after the movie's release, spend a lot of time Rambo-ing. Rambo 3 is not as tense and emotional as the first, and it's not as lame and awful as the second one. It is, however, way more violent than either of the preceding movies (if memory serves, and maybe it doesn't). There are some Awesome Kills (key elements: glow sticks, exploding arrows, grenades-on-ropes), a great scene of self-cauterization-by-gunpowder (something that a Scarier Man perfected years before), and a climax that pits a tank against a helicopter in order to answer civilization's age-old question: "what would happen if a tank and a helicopter got into a fight? Like, I mean, really threw down." I don't know what else to tell you. I've told you everything you need to know.

6 out of 10.