Rambo Saves Afghanistan

With the first two films in the series (First Blood and Rambo: First Blood Part II) we saw the transition from 1970s drama into 1980s full-blown action play out almost in real time. The thoughtful, contemplative drama (albeit still having some solid action included) of First Blood steadily drains away in Rambo: First Blood Part II until the climax leaves us with nothing but screaming, explosions, and mindless action. Any thought of tackling an important message, about reflecting on the character or what he’s been through, is all but abandoned by the time the second film’s credits roll.

And yet, even having watched the first sequel, and knowing just how much the film series was set to devolve into self parody, I still wasn’t really ready for what the thing film, Rambo III, had in store for me. Ditching the First Blood name entirely, and embracing the 1980s cheese that this film series had helped to bring on, Rambo III is all excess, all mindless action, with very little left of the contemplative political discourse that had made the first film interesting to watch. Rambo III is a big, dumb action flick, casting aside the rightful legacy the series could have built for itself.

But worse, it’s also exceedingly hard to watch now considering what’s happened in the world in the forty years since this film came out. Sending Rambo into Afghanistan back in 1988 probably seemed like a really smart idea for a plotline. Help a bunch of rebels overthrow the repressive Soviet regime? What could be bad about that? And yet, when we look a couple of years ahead, to when Afghanistan fell into a Civil War after the Soviets left, and then the Taliban rose and, well… we all know what happened in 2001. Now I’m not saying that Rambo helped cause 9/11, as that’s silly. But considering who we’re supposed to be rooting for in this film, and who Rambo aligns himself with, this film implies unintended political consequences for Rambo’s actions, and that absolutely works against the “rah rah, America! Fuck yeah!” message the film tries to tell.

The film finds John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone, of course) living in Thailand, spending his days in underground pit fighting matches before heading back to a Buddhist monastery to help the monks that let him live there. His peaceful reverie is disturbed, though, when his old friend, Colonel Sam Trautman (a returning Richard Crenna), comes looking for the former soldier. The CIA, as explained by handler Robert Griggs (Kurtwood Smith), has an op in Afghanistan supplying weapons to the local rebels so they can fight off the Soviets and free their country for themselves. Trautman is going in on the mission and he wants Rambo to go with him to ensure the op is successful. Rambo politely declines.

Trautman goes off without his best soldier and, as expected, is immediately captured after crossing the border into Afghanistan. Griggs visits Rambo afterwards, letting him know his friend was caught. Rambo immediately decides to go in, on his own, a one man army set with one goal in mind: save Trautman. But if, in the process, he gets to fight off the Soviets, save the Afghanis and, in effect, end the Cold War with a decisive win for the Americans, well, how could Rambo possibly say no?

Watching this film I couldn’t help but reflect on the trajectory of this series. These three Rambo films form the original trilogy, a set of movies that came out every three years or so, making John Rambo into something of a recurring franchise. “It’s been three years, time to put out another Rambo,” in effect, and up until the third film it seemed to be working. This original trilogy stood on their own, showing the evolution of the character, and they worked as a single story. I just wouldn’t argue that it’s quite the story the film franchise set out to tell when it was just First Blood.

The thing is, watching this film, it’s hard to ignore that Rambo III completely ignores the message of the first film. First Blood made a convincing case that war hurts everyone, that men go into the meat grinder that is the military and come out broken and ruined. Waging war is a no-win scenario; there’s no way to win and fighting just breaks more people, damages more lives, ruins hopes and dreams and futures. And then you get to Rambo III and the film says, “hell yeah, we can war! War! Let’s go win this war!” Rambo III, in effect, makes the exact opposite argument from First Blood and, in the process, ends up feeling like a completely different film from an entirely different series. It’s so weird.

About the only time the film even tries to approach the thoughtful politics and contemplative drama of the first film is when Rambo is in a Mujahideen camp, there to get aid on his mission to the Soviet complex where his friend is being held. There we see the ravages of the war, hear from the soldiers about how they’re trying to free their country, listen to them talk about all that the war for their freedom has cost. It’s a sequence that would work so well if I weren’t viewing it in 2025 with knowledge of the last four decades of geopolitics. Knowing what was to come in Afghanistan, America, and the rest of the world in the years following Rambo meddling in political affairs he didn’t understand, it very much taints this whole sequence.

As such we have to set aside any expectations for what this film should be and just try to enjoy it for what it is, and in that case what we have is a lot of 1980s cheese and not much else. Rambo III effectively amounts to what would happen if you took the climax from Rambo: First Blood Part II, with all its action excess and brainless violence, and made it into an entire movie. Stallone wanders from one desert location to another, barely talking and hardly engaging with anyone. He has one mission: to go to the Soviets and save his friend (killing every Soviet in the process if he has to). Whatever else is going on around him barely matters at all.

In a lot of ways this film reminded me of a bigger, dumber Indiana JonesTapping into the classic serial adventures of the 1940s, this franchise has gone on to spawn five films, multiple video games, a TV series, and so many novels and books. film. We have our hero, who is the best at what he does, go off into the desert to retrieve something from an “evil” country diametrically opposed to America, something they shouldn’t have that doesn’t belong to them. He gets in, gets caught, escapes, retrieves the object in question, kills a lot of the bad guys, and saves the day. If you gave him a jaunty hat and a whip you could easily turn Rambo into Indy without a second thought. Although what you’d have is one of the worst Indiana Jones films. Maybe even worse than Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (but only maybe).

And the thing is that I don’t necessarily hate brainless action. It can be fun when it’s directed well. That’s the problem with Rambo III, though: it’s not competent at all. Its best moments come when it focuses on the characters and slows down to pause and think. It’s just that those moments come infrequently in the film, leaving us with a lot of time spent on action and adventure, and director Peter MacDonald doesn’t have any flair for directing action. His sequences are choppy, hard to follow, barely comprehensible messes. They eventually just devolve into so much noise, making it hard to watch and harder to care about anything going on.

I think, somewhere, in the middle of all this mess is probably a sliver of a good film. Rambo going into hostile territory to rescue someone is a solid plotline. It was so good they already did it, in fact, with Rambo: First Blood Part II. In fact, everything that works about this film really comes from the previous two movies. But as the films descend towards being Rambo movies and not First Blood films we’ve lost everything that made them interesting, dramatic, or effective. With Rambo III the series is wholly remade into 1980s spectacle cheese, and in the process it becomes bland, hard to watch, and at times politically uncomfortable.

It might have been best, for everyone involved, if Rambo had left Afghanistan alone. Certainly, for those of us in the audience, that would have been the best possible outcome, on all fronts.