Stallone Does Justice To The People Of Burma
international |
arts and media |
opinion/analysis 
Saturday March 01, 2008 12:43
by Movie Fan
"Rambo" is anything but another cynical Hollywood blockbuster
It does what it says on the tin.
A simplistic plot.
A damsel in distress must be rescued by a hero against impossible odds.
A black and white vision of good and evil.
BUT WHAT EVIL!
Like no other movie I have ever seen, perhaps Schindler's List, this movie demonstrates the evil of ethnic cleansing, tyranny and injustice that the West would like to pretend does not exist.
Nobody can see this movie and not be changed, outraged and forced to do something for the people of Burma and other peoples oppressed through out the world.
Rambo is a walking physical and psychological scar, a Frankenstein monster, a broken Hercules, unloved and unwanted.
A group of sickeningly idealistic smugly pacficist bible bashers seek his help to get upriver into Burma in a childishly sentimental and utterly wrongheaded crusade to help the people of Burma.
How wrong they are, is demonstrated in a scene of indescrible brutality when the Burmese military wipe out a village and take them captive.
Naturally Rambo comes to the rescue and wipes out the bad guys.
The final battle is astonishingly violent.
Rambo literally rips the raping murdering bastards to pieces with a .50 calibre machine gun.
Apparently the Karen rebels who are fighting valiantly to stay alive have take comfort that their plight is being raised no matter how garishly.
The Myamar government unsurprisingly have banned the movie.
One is reminded of many parts of the world where injustice is perpetrated while the West stand idly by while the security of Iraqi oil gets top priority.
I cried as I remembered my indifference to the failure of the Burmese uprising last October.
Stallone's message to the governments of the world who prefer to ignore the crimes of evil regimes throughout the world.
DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING, RIGHT NOW AND STOP MAKING EXCUSES!
Comments (12 of 12)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12A naive group of bible missionaries and doctors arrive in a Burmese village and set about helping sick people.
The Burmese military turn up and wipe out the village.
This scene is absolute horrifying but reflects the reality of present day Burma
This scene is a cry of despair.
In reality evil has triumphed in Burma.
The junta slaughtered protestors and monks last October.
There are really are no Rambos prepared to do anything.
I agree with what you have to say - superficially this is just another brainless action movie.
I see a more subversive message:
1. The naive Christian missionaries represent the U.S.’s simplistic vision of bringing “democracy” to Afghanistan and Iraq. The Christians are completely ignorant of the history and circumstances in Burma. Their arrogance and ethnocentricism creates a quagmire. They unknowingly interpose themselves in a conflict and end up bringing more harm than good to those who they wished to help.
2. Rambo has a silent realization at the end of the movie as he surveys the carnage left in the wake of the film’s climactic battle. The dizzying torrent of violence has left all damaged. There are no winners. There is no sustainable peace acheived through extrinsically motivated war. Rambo’s love interest, Sarah, falls into the arms of her pathetic missionary colleague. The end of the movie doesn’t even yield a happy ending in terms of “the hero gets the damsel.” The illusion of a tightly knit happy ending is shattered. Rambo’s resolution: Pull out. He returns to Arizona. Abandon mission.
3. The climax of the movie finds John Rambo stationed behind an automatic gun on a truck. He obliterates hundreds of Burmese soldiers in his path. These soldiers become faceless, flailing bodies. The once inventive, hands-on hero is forced to conform to cold, mechanized, remote warfare. Ramb doesn’t triumph by his own merit. He is merely a gun operator.
I think the Rambo movies are brave and fantastic.
Rambo is 100% blue collar, he isn't educated, he doesn't know the why's, he just knows what is right and what is wrong.
He is a modern everyman, the naive man who trusts in his leaders and his country and honestly does his duty, only to find Vietnam was the wrong war to fight and finds on his return home that an ungrateful pampered nation doesn't care about his sacrifice - the hero is a stanger among his own people. In the second movie he returns to Vietnam to rescue men who were abandoned and forgotten after the war was over, men like himself. In the third movie he sides with the people of Afghanistan, the ultimate underdogs, not out of American patriotism, but because evil men, it does not matter that they are Russian Soviets, are slaughtering them.
The fourth movie is a parable for the post-cold war world - the certainties of the confrontation with US imperialism and Soviet imperialism are no longer relevant - what is relevant and always will be relevant is that when innocent people are being killed, by whomever for whatever nebulus cause, it does not matter if it is politically inconvienient (nobody is doing anything about Burma rather than upset the Chinese) it is the right thing to do and always will be the right thing to do.
Rambo represents basic uncomplicated human decency which has been hiding out in the jungle of late.
The final scene where Rambo does home to the farm in Arizona with "R.Rambo" on the letter box (presumeably his father) shows that human decency, not clouded or qualified by ideology, needs to return to its place in civilisation.
The triumphant scene with the machine guns laying waste to scores of Burmese fascists represents a noble uncompromising intolerance of evil.
When I was growing up in the 80s the Anti War /American pro Sov crowd were calling Rambo movies,typical US capitalist murdering fantasies against the peaceful Vietnamese and Russians.Foisted on by a few inane comments from President Ron Regan.Not to mind that every fruitand nut group in the Western world were echoing the same movie critiques. Now a film of simple blast away of whatever bad guys are in the way is lauded as a brilliant piece of movie making..
Shheesh,strange days indeed.
And there I was thinking that Rambo was all about killing yellow people.
People in 'the West' ARE trying to help the people of Burma (without even trying to make converts!), bringing medical aid etc., to the Karen people, & Free Burma Rangers, for example, but they need financial & publicity help.
I can remember being asked to sign a petition of protest against the actions of the Burma Junta last year when the peaceful uprising was crushed by tanks and troops.
Presumeably the murdering bastards were going to listen to a few idealists marching into the Burmese consulate in Dublin?
Burst their arses laughing.
What the people of Burma need is guns so they can overthrow the dictatorship.
it's a movie... its an action movie fictional..
and bad as they are, I think even the Burmese soldiers would hit the dirt if someone opened up with a heavy machine gun, rather than all standing up straight trying to return fire with an AK 47.
China is arming the Burmese military, a few weapons smuggled in for the other side won't match that, except in the movie
I ask meself each morning....see http://www.oneplanetpictures.co.uk/burmaset.htm
www.friendsofthekaren.org
www.csw.org.uk
www.freeburmarangersorg
www.burmacampaign.org.uk
www.jubileecampaign.co.uk
www.karenaid.org
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