Rambo III (1988)
A purely propagandist return of the popular 1980s hero sees Stallone donning the tightly-bound bandana to the forehead again for another one-man rescue attempt. This time it’s a bit more personal as his former Vietnam commander and friend, Colonel Trautman (Crenna), has been captured by Russian forces as he tries to rally the Afghan rebels who have been winning the resistance. The Afghani people are too suspicious of the American to willingly join his crusade to spring Trautman from his prison cell, leaving him to go it mostly alone, with one or two friends he has made in his short introduction to their ranks. He faces formidable odds, as the prison is surrounded by landmines, tanks, and hundreds of Russians, and the Russkie leadership is as corrupt and uncaring as the worst of them.
Within a year after the major success of Rambo: First Blood Part II, the third entry would get the green light for a shoot to begin in late 1986. The budget at that time would be a sizable $30 million, with Highlander director Russell Mulcahy personally picked by Stallone to direct, working from a script by Harry Kleiner, based on an idea by Stallone (who wanted a message movie about shedding light on a genocide perpetrated by the Soviet Union in a country few Americans had been paying attention to), with a tentative release date of July 4, 1987. A few delays, including Stallone’s rejection of the script, would push that date back to Thanksgiving later that year, initially slated to be shot in England, but due to budgetary considerations, it would follow in the footsteps of its predecessor by being shot in Mexico. After plunking down about $5 million worth of sets only to find that the location in Mexico they had chosen was not going to work, so there would be an effort to look for a place in the United States that would work to no avail, finally settling for various spots in Israel, with the Dead Sea region substituting for Afghanistan, and smaller shoots to be done in Thailand and pick-up shots in Yuma, AZ, a place they originally contemplated for the primary shoot, due to restrictions on where and what they could shoot in Israel.
As with the prior two films, Sylvester Stallone would insist on rewriting the script, vowing to make Rambo III a more realistic and less cartoonish effort than the second film. Meanwhile, the budget would get bumped up again to accommodate Stallone’s whopping $16 million price tag to star, though he would waive this fee for a “hefty” percentage of the profits and a Gulfstream jet they used for transportation on the film (Caolco partner Mario Kassar similarly had gifted a Gulfstream jet to Arnold Schwarzenegger for making Commando) when the budget would shoot up to about $60 million. Despite being involved for over a year, free-wheeling director Russell Mulcahy would end up getting fired, amicably (they remain friends to this day), for creative differences on the direction Stallone wanted the film to go (Mulcahy wanted to shoot it as an epic film with dark undertones, while Stallone wanted more a more personal film and didn’t like the pretty-boy actors he had hired). Firings would come fast and furious among the cameramen and assistant directors, including cinematographer Ric Waite (who worked with Stallone on his previous film, Cobra).
Second unit director Peter MacDonald was promoted, albeit reluctantly, to helm his first film, with photography by David Gurfinkel (who worked with Stallone on Over the Top), who himself would end up getting replaced by camera operator John Stanier. MacDonald would proceed to try to find humor and vulnerability to add to Rambo’s character, but much of it would be stripped away by Stallone, who was the one actually calling the shots. Meanwhile, a large portion of Jerry Goldsmith’s score is merely recycled directly from his work on Rambo: First Blood Part II. David Morrell would once again write the novelization.
High temperatures would become an issue, as the heat would soar past 120 degrees Fahrenheit on many days. Carolco would end up getting sued by Golan-Globus for the shoot in Tel Aviv due to bounced checks. Stallone maintains that the major sunburn he received during his shoot in the desert damaged his skin to the point where he permanently has a reddish tint to his complexion.
It wasn’t the best of times for the aging Rambo to be released in 1988, as the Russians were already pulling out of Afghanistan at the time of the film’s release, Reagan was on the way out, while the Soviet Union was already on the verge of collapse and, under Gorbachev and his glasnost policy, turning around their old ways, making them rather sympathetic adversaries in the real-life news. It’s too bad for the makers of the film, as it would be the most expensive film ever made at the time — it would only gross half of its $60 million back at the US box office (though it still did quite well internationally). Without a great deal of patriotism in the struggle, and a lack of nobility in Rambo’s tenacious quest to get a friend out of a prison camp (“‘Cuz he’d do it for me” is his only rationale), the pleasures of Rambo III lie mostly in the mechanics, which by this point in the series had already been mounted on predictable rails to get to its inevitable conclusion.
Critical write-ups were not kind for the third entry, which would eventually go on to get nominated for Worst Picture at the Golden Raspberry Awards (aka, the Razzies) losing to Cocktail, though Stallone would grab the Worst Actor prize. It also would set a Guinness World Record for the most acts of violence committed in one movie up to that point, with 221 acts of violence, over 70 explosions, and at least 108 characters shown slaughtered on camera. Box office returns in the United States would prove disappointing, losing to Crocodile Dundee II in its initial week of release and falling out of the top ten within a month, resulting in only about $53 million, far short of its $60+ million budget, and that’s not including advertising. International receipts were kinder, adding $135 million to the haul, making it profitable in the end.
Fans will get what they pay for in terms of explosions, stunts, high body counts, and nifty ways to kill an adversary galore, but unless you’re a die-hard action nut, there is absolutely nothing else going for this outing that would appeal to anyone else. Although the film is dedicated to the people of Afghanistan, the politics of the plot are virtually nonexistent, as Rambo could have been fighting alongside just about any foreign army fighting a Communist threat and the film would have virtually been identical in execution.
Since you know what you’re getting — namely, more of the same — this is dreadfully boring most of the time, never giving audiences the food for thought that the two previous Rambo outings did regarding the wound that never quite healed, the Vietnam War experience. Stallone, who co-wrote the screenplay, keeps the dialogue minimal, even allowing for a couple of one-liners for comic relief. While the gags may be out of character, it does bring a certain life to the dreariness of the rest of the film that suggests how Stallone could have made this endeavor much more tolerable by just having fun with the outlandish material.
Much of the footage of this pro-Islamic forces flick would ironically be shot in Israel, a country which itself had been facilitating the non-US sales of weapons that would end up in Afghan hands. Of course, as history has panned out, some of the very factions that Rambo fights along with here at this point of the war would eventually serve as the backbone of the Taliban, who assisted al-Qaeda, the group that would unleash heinous terrorist attacks against the United States and other Western powers, further tainting whatever goodwill the makers of the film intended to honor the freedom-fighting Mujahideen. Turns out that the film could rightly be seen as little more than thinly-veiled propaganda, as the US CIA had also been actively funneling in money through the Pakistani ISI with Operation Cyclone.
Rambo had turned from a symbol of Vietnam veteran angst against government neglect to a complete tool for propagating dubious military doctrines to the American public. When you can’t even feel good that Rambo has eviscerated the crap out of those “rat Commie bastards” at the end of the film, what purpose does a film like this even serve anymore? Luckily, the longer intended ending that has Rambo stay with the Mujahideen as his new warrior family was trimmed out before it made the film unpalatable to most audiences in post-9/11 America.
Qwipster’s rating: D+
MPAA Rated: R for strong pervasive violence and language
Running time: 101 min.
Cast: Sylvester Stallon, Richard Crenna, Marc de Jonge, Kurtwood Smith, Spiros Focas, Sasson Gabai
Director: Peter MacDonald
Screenplay: Sylvester Stallone, Sheldon Lettich