MOVIE REVIEWS : Re-Flexing Those Superhero Muscles : ‘Rambo III’ Regenerates the Myth Machine

I met a traveller from an antique land who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert... Near them, on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies. . . .

--from “Ozymandias,” Shelley

Actors are prone to fits of narcissism, but in “Rambo III” (citywide), star/writer Sylvester Stallone breaks all the records. Together with his fellow film makers, he’s made what may be a $60-million monument to himself.

It’s an awe-struck memorial to his musculature, a would-be pop “Iliad” loony with self-love--a carnival of carnage that reduces history, politics and warfare to foils for the greater glory of Sly. For sheer, unabashed--and wildly expensive--self-regard, “Rambo III” may never be surpassed.

In its own immodest way, it’s a phenomenon. This third exploit of one-man attack squad John Rambo--spreading his worldwide vendetta to Afghanistan--may be, for some audiences, a real old-fashioned talk-back-to-the-screen picture. It’s both visually spectacular and genuinely ridiculous: a gigantically swollen self-parody, loaded with howlers, and an unconsciously camped-up homoerotic male-bonding adventure, rife with lunatic beefcake and grandiose phallic symbols.

Stallone’s sequels often seem less like continuations than crazy daydreams that the characters in the previous movie are having. Like the more exciting “Rambo II,” “Rambo III”--silliest of the series--is a goofy, blood-drenched magnification of the movie before it.

In “Rambo II,” Stallone’s stoic commando-in-spite-of-himself, on an MIA rescue mission, outfought the combined Soviet and Vietnamese forces almost single-handedly, after being betrayed by his own government. Here, he has a superficially easier assignment, rescuing his beloved mentor, Col. Sam Trautman (Richard Crenna), from sadistic Soviet captors, and beating the Soviet occupying army--with the help of local sidekicks and what looks like the Afghan rebel light cavalry.

The movie is mythic in an even bigger way than the last one. When the star whirls into his first close-up, sweatband coiffing his curly mane above Paul McCartney-like bedroom eyes--ominous Jerry Goldsmith chords crash as if a moon were rising over Jupiter.

First-time director Peter Macdonald--who handled the second-unit action work in “Rambo II”--frames him like a monolith or a mesa. Stallone’s close-ups and medium shots look as if they’re about to be stamped on commemorative coins.

And Stallone goes to preposterous lengths to make Rambo more lovable. He’s introduced as a handyman at a Thai Buddhist monastery--where he repairs the golden roofs and moonlights as a stick-fighter. In addition, he’s surrounded with lovable sidekicks: fatherly Trautman, the wily, wiry Mousa (Sasson Gabai), and a dewy-eyed orphan, Hamid (Doudi Shoua)--who looks like the old comic-strip refugee Dondi.

Hamid is a major child character, but we barely see any women until the Soviets mount an air attack on the rebel camp, in the middle of a buzkashi contest. Then, apparently to demonstrate that the enemy are fiends who kill women and children, the women and children run out on cue to be killed.

The fiends are faceless too--like ducks in a shooting gallery--and they’re led by Col. Zaysen (Marc de Jonge), who always has a chess game on his desk, and a scowl. Zaysen seems to spend most of his time torturing Trautman--trying to squeeze out information on his Stinger missiles--or chasing Rambo in his helicopter. If Rambo and Trautman seem to be tight, this nefarious colonel seems infatuated with both of them; his torture scenes are like electronic rapes.

One sequence in “Rambo III” is the quintessence of half-conscious camp. From a low angle, we watch a wounded Stallone writhe as he pulls a chunk of wood out of his midsection and then cauterizes the wound with gunpowder. The scene, which copies a bravura moment in Clint Eastwood’s “Two Mules for Sister Sara”--has Rambo bathed in a fiery light that makes him look like St. Sebastian or Prometheus.

There’s something almost monstrously amusing about this kind of unbridled cheek, this corny, faked nobility. It’s almost as if Stallone were a modern Pharaoh, entombing himself in celluloid, piling up cinematic loot--grandiose trappings, spectacle and dead extras--in a grand, doomed attempt, like King Tut or Shelley’s Ozymandias, to cheat the hereafter.

The film argues strenuously for American intervention in a war that’s already over--with the Soviet invaders withdrawing. (Maybe, if enough people see the movie, it’ll start up again.) Is there any evidence that Stallone--who dedicates the film to the fighting people of Afghanistan--feels real sympathy for them? In a way, the rebels may exist here merely to deify Rambo, give him an arena for another battle. And, since Stallone’s most typical movie casts everything--life, war, romance, dance concerts--in the form of sporting events, the only important thing for him may be the score.

Admirers of “Rambo III” will probably point out that it moves fast. But then, so does a gazelle--and a gazelle has better dialogue and more personality. But, however many millions of dollars this movie squeezes out of a credulous public, the long-term fate of “Rambo III” (MPAA-rated R, for language and violence) will probably be that of Ozymandias’ statue in Shelley’s poem: lying wrecked in the desert, with a legend reading “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”

“Yo!”

‘RAMBO III’

A Tri-Star Pictures release of a Carolco production. Producer Buzz Fietshans. Director Peter Macdonald. Script Sylvester Stallone, Sheldon Lettich. Camera John Stanier. Music Jerry Goldsmith. Editors James Symons, Andrew London, O. Nicholas Brown, Edward A. Warschilka. With Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Marc de Jonge, Kurtwood Smith, Spiros Focas, Sasson Gabai, Doudi Shoua.

Running time: 1 hour, 51 minutes.

MPAA rating: R (under 17 requires an accompanying parent or adult guardian).