In preparing to watch the latest installment of the Rambo series, I’ve gone back and re-watched all of the original three films, which I hadn’t seen in probably 15 years. Unfortunately, they are so uniformly bad that it has taken me now over a year to get through the three of them. I finished watching part III today and, like the two films before it, it was a notably underwhelming cinematic experience.

By this point in the series, the Rambo formula is worked out in every detail. Rambo just wants to be left alone but then gets sucked into some brutally violent situation which, again, he has to take care of all on his own. He doesn’t really play well with others, you see.

Just as we found him languishing in a prison labor camp at the beginning of the second movie, Rambo is now living the dubious life of a monk in Thailand who takes breaks from the monastery to head into Bangkok and make some extra money in the stick-fighting competitions, which he promptly turns over to the monks to help build the monastery. He likes the feeling of belonging that he gets from living among the monks and doesn’t want to be a soldier anymore. Needless to say, when the guys with the stripes on their shoulders approach and ask for his help, he’s uninterested until a mission goes forward in Afghanistan and results in the good guy from the second movie getting taken prisoner, the first American ever taken prisoner in Afghanistan.

And here, just like the last movie, is where everything starts to fall apart. The first American ever captured in Afghanistan is not an enviable position, to be sure, so it’s easy to understand why Rambo would make such a sudden change of heart. What is unfortunately missing is the entire rest of the American military. I’m curious about how the real members of the United States military responded to the movie, which portrays them as either helpless or completely absent.

It may be, perhaps, that the mission is thought to be a lost cause or not worth the risk, so sending Rambo in must, of course, be done “unofficially.” If Rambo is caught, he is told prior to embarking on the mission, the military will deny all knowledge of his existence, which prompts Rambo to sneer and say he’s used to such treatment, and then do that thing where he ties his headband on all dramatically.

At any rate, it’s no surprise when Rambo insists that he has to do everything on his own. If you saw the level of sheer camp that the second movie reached then you know something of what to expect here, although it should be said that Rambo III is certainly better than First Blood Part II, which is undeniably the worst film of the already unimpressive series.

It is definitely interesting, however, to watch the way the Afghani people are portrayed in the movie.Rambo enters Afghanistan alone and has to make his way to where the prisoner is being kept with only a single in-country contact, who tells him all about the cultural realities on the ground for the Afghani people. Alexander the Great tried and failed to conquer the Afghans, then the British, then the Americans, and they all failed. He explains to Rambo and ancient battle prayer written by a long-since defeated enemy – “May God deliver us from the venom of the cobra, the teeth of the tiger, and the vengeance of the Afghan.”

The relationship between America and Afghanistan has changed drastically over the years, and not in a good way. In fact, given that we’re at war in Afghanistan right now, this movie appears strangely prophetic. If George W. Bush had re-watched Rambo III somewhere around early 2003, it would not be a stretch to think that the situation in the middle east might be drastically different right now.

“Every day your war machines lose ground to a bunch of poorly armed, poorly equipped freedom fighters. The fact is you underestimated your competition. If you’d studied your history you would know that these people have never given up to anyone. They’d rather die than be slaves to an invading army. You can’t defeat a people like that!”

Believe it or not, this is not a scathing criticism of America’s current war in Afghanistan, it’s a scathing criticism by the American prisoner of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the movie. It is one of the movie’s strangest qualities that it pitts the Americans and the Afghans as allies against the cartoonishly villainous Soviets, who come in the form of wild-eyed lunatics at the controls of attack helicopters that buzz small villages laying waste unprovoked to whole populations of peaceful civilians. They are not just an invading force, they are airborne murderers that bombs women and children and disguise bombs as toys to trick unsuspecting children.

With such enemies, it is understandable when one character ominously says, “God would have mercy, Rambo won’t…” as Rambo sets off on his preposterous one-man mission of vengeance against the invading Soviets. It’s interesting that the movie makes so much of how the Afghans have never given in to any invading force in their long history, and yet now they need Rambo to come in and save them from the Russians, but no matter. The movie was made to give the world another dose of outlandish Rambo-style retribution directed at the evil forces that be, and that’s what it delivers. It’s just too bad that Rambo-style retribution is generally so head-smackingly dumb.

The Bean Meter

2.5 Beans out of 5.