Rambo is the great American soldier. He can single handedly take out a local police force, the remaining Vietcong or invading Soviet forces. This time Rambo goes upriver to Burma, where real life atrocities are occurring within a corrupt military, to rescue a group of missionaries who tried to offer help.
Real life has given writer/director/star Sylvester Stallone many battles to fight also. He spoke about his victories in the war to bring one last Rambo to the screen.
The Battle of Aging Action Heroes
Winner: Nostalgia
“If I were trying to go after a youth audience and trying to find something hip, using certain music and whatever, I think that would be pretty obvious and be rejected. There are some things that never change and are universal truths. As you get older, they become more and more apparent about how difficult life is …The young people who would support Rocky more than even people my age, I think, really enjoy and embrace those kinds of lessons. I think the lesson that is somewhat presented here–that war is hell and there is no winner ever and unfortunately people just have to find it out the hard way–will translate.”[PAGEBREAK]
The Battle of Brainless Action
Winner: Character Depth
“The ponderousness that comes with aging, the sense of weight, the sense of knowledge, knowing too much, the lack of naivete which happened in my life, sort of set the stage for me. I wanted Rambo to be this heavier, bulkier [character], that’s why his first line in the movie is pretty negative. He’s given up. He has nothing. The other Rambos, I felt, had a bit too much energy. They were a little too spry. I’m not trying to run myself down but there was much more vanity involved. Tank tops, it was all about body movement rather than just the ferocity and the commitment of what he was doing. This character to me is much more interesting. I like First Blood and I like this one, just like the first Rocky and the last Rocky Balboa. Everything in between was kind of trying to figure out what I should do.” [PAGEBREAK]
The Battle of Glamorizing Violence
Winner: Artistic Integrity
“I had to live up to a certain kind of responsibility, because people are dying as we’re making the film. Therefore, to just have me running through the film doing these extraordinary heroics I thought would demean what they’re going through. So they had to have their moment where you see a village that is decimated. That’s what happened. As a matter of fact, it’s even worse. The biggest and most interesting crisis in the world is the human crises. It never gets boring. Just like Shakespeare. You don’t need a gimmick. It’s just man against man, just their intolerance of each other.”[PAGEBREAK]
The Battle of Location Scouting
Winner: Nature
“It was the hottest temperatures in 94 years. They called it ‘the burning season.’ The entire country’s burning to the ground. Every time we cleared it, people were just getting sick. There are 165 different snakes in Thailand, 90 that were poisonous. So we lived with the constant problem of people being bit, centipedes which are the size of your shoe being found in your shoes. It was a rough. Julie Benz, coming from Dexter, went ‘What?’ Welcome to action films. You could never have done it anywhere else on the planet. Believe me, when we were starting to get all the threats from the Burmese, I said, ‘Can’t we shoot this in Puerto Vallarta?'”[PAGEBREAK]
The Battle of One’s Own Stunts
Winner: Insurance Companies
“I did everything but one stunt, the one where I’m supposed to jump off the hill during the explosion when the big bomb goes off. I really thought the stunt guy was going to die. I felt bad. We had to do it twice and it was very slippery. You will have to look at the ‘Making of’ when the video comes out, because there were so many injuries during the shooting, like snake bites, cuts, and so on, But this made this movie such a great adventure because of all of these incidents.”
