Musings from Brian J. Noggle

I just watched some 1980s-era Stallone films (two of the three Rambo movies I just watched were from the 1980s), and one (meaning I) can forget the heirarchy of the action films of the day. Stallone and Schwarzenneggar were the top; Chuck Norris was no better than a B; and Steven Seagal was kind of a C-level. Just above direct-to-video or direct-to-cable fare. And eventually he would get down to that sort of level. I guess his biggest film, Under Siege, was in the future, but he had a stack of films right at the turn of the 1990s, and I tend to think of On Deadly Ground and Glimmer Man as past the peak. But that’s just me.

So: Seagal plays a DEA deep cover agent who loses a partner on a deal gone bad and he retires or takes some time off and goes home to find a former colleague coaching high school football. Jamaican posses are moving in with their crack and their brutality, displacing the Colombians and their cocaine. Although Seagal tries to stay out of it, he gets involved after a gangland massacre where he catches one of the Jamaicans, and the Jamaicans mark he and his family for death. With the help of a cop on loan from the Jamaican authorities and the football coach, they take down the powerful leader of the posse whom supposedly has strong magic, but the obvious twist is that he has a twin brother that nobody knew about even though he was always around and just out of sight.

So, yeah, it’s what you would expect: Seagal acting stoicly (or not acting maybe), some martial arts, and gun play. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a Seagal film–I’ve seen his 80s work, I saw Under Siege in the theater, and a couple of other things from the 1990s. But I am not a particular fan. And it might be a while before I watch another. Unless I find a boxed set for a buck or something.

Well, after picking these up at an estate sale a couple weeks ago, I thought maybe I would wait until I got a copy of First Blood to watch the series from the beginning, but I did not. I watched them not quite on consecutive nights, but enough to have them very fresh in mind as I moved to the next. I read the novels in 2008 (see First Blood and Rambo: First Blood Part II).

So: In Rambo: First Blood Part II, Colonel Trautman gets Rambo out of prison (for his actions in the first movie) on a covert mission into Vietnam to scout a prison camp that might hold American POWs. He is not to engage the enemy, though–only to confirm the presence of POWs, and a Delta Team will get them out. But while the government official running the op, Murdoch, expected the camp to be empty, the Vietnamese have rotated in prisoners, and Rambo liberates one and brings him to the extraction/exfil point. When Murdoch hears that, he aborts the mission before pickup, leaving Rambo to his fate. Rambo then breaks out with the help of his Vietnamese contact played by Julia Nickson and delivers the POWs of the camp to Murdoch.

The film would have been a scant decade after the end of the war, so it was still pretty fresh in the American zeitgeist (it was the topic of many films and television programs for quite some time). It had a couple of different acts to it and even a bit of depth to it. It’s not just jingoism; parts of the government (maybe all of it) are suspect and have their own agendas contrasting with that of the common man or soldier.

Rambo III, on the other hand–well, it lacks depth. It is a bit more….. jingoistic? It spends too much of its runtime explaining the gallant people of Afghanistan, those plucky guerrillas fighting against the Soviet menace. Trautman finds Rambo living in an ashram after the events of the second movie and stick-fighting for a little extra cash for the monks, and he invites Rambo to join him on an expedition into Afghanistan to find why one sector is particularly good at blocking arms shipments. Rambo demurs, but When Trautman is captured, he reconsiders and basically single-handedly invades a fortress. Well, he does have an Afghan guide and a child warrior for company, and the mujahideen do ride the rescue, but it’s overly simple and more comic-book/action movie than the others.

This film must have come on Showtime fresh right before we moved out of the trailer park, as I’ve seen it several times. But the only things that stuck with me were the opening scene and the cauterizing a wound with gundpowder scene. And my boys have not seen it, they have seen two films which parodied it: Hot Shots! Part Deux and UHF (which includes a parody of it in one of George’s daydreams).

Jeez, though, when you think that in a shorter span of time than the gap between Vietnam and the first (and second) films that the United States would be the target of those “gallant” freedom fighters. Life comes at you pretty fast especially in retrospect.

Rambo (don’t think too hard about the series numbering and naming convention) takes place 20 years later. Rambo is still living in southeast Asia. The Burmese civil war is raging–we get some expository footage to start the film–and a group of Christians is hoping to go up river to deliver medicine and hope to a persecuted Christian village, and they want to hire Rambo and his boat to take them. He demurs, but the woman of the group convinces him to help. So he takes them up river and protects them from pirates on the way. After they disembark, they’re captured by the local warlord who razes the village in the manner of Ghengis Khan. Rambo learns this when another member of their ministry arrives and commissions Rambo to ferry a team of mercenaries up river to find them. And he ends up taking a more active role in the rescue despite the mercenary leader dismissing him as just “the boat guy.”

This film, too, has some depth to it. Rambo is older, a bit more jaded and tired, but he has some attraction to the woman in the group which cannot be returned because she is, apparently, the fiancee of the group leader. And at the end, when they’re safe, she runs to him while Rambo watches from a distance. And Rambo returns to his hometown at the end of the film to reconcile with his father and/or family.

The shots are more dramatic as well–the 80s oranges have been washed out by the darkness of 21st century filmmaking, but Stallone, also the director, put some thought into them. Its effects are more gory than the 80s spot of blood and belly clutching–one online source said it was to maximize the effects budget because fake blood is cheap–but comparing other similar films from across those decades (see also On All The Conan Movies–so far) shows that it’s just how movies are made these days.

One thing to note about the films: They have mostly or all male casts. Rambo: First Blood Part II has the contact in Vietnam; Rambo III has a couple of extras amongst the Afghan tribespeople. Rambo has the woman who is on the missionary team and some extras. Very male dominated films, and I only note it because I know you want to see photos of the pretty actresses in them, and all you get is Julia Nickson. Continue reading “Movie Report: Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985); Rambo III (1988), Rambo (2008)” →

As I mentioned in February, I wanted to pick up a copy of this film when Bob Uecker died because I’d never seen it. Apparently, also, the St. Louis Blues hockey club have picked up a “mascot” named Jobu for their late season push and playoff run which was a voodoo idol from this movie as well. So I had two reasons to watch it, and I was happy to find a videocassette copy of it last weekend.

So: It’s a comedy that tracks kind of with the plot of Bull Durham, almost. The characters anyway. The wife of the man who owned the Cleveland Indians inherits the team when he dies, and she wants the team to move to Miami, so she sets the GM to build a roster from nobodies and has-beens. The veteran catcher, played by Tom Berenger, is a few years past his prime and has bad knees. Charlie Sheen plays a convict who joins the team as a fireball pitcher with control issues caused by poor eyesight. A Cuban power hitter, played by Dennis Haysbert (whom I knew was in the film but did not recognize), offers sacrifices to Jobu. A veteran pitcher relies on foreign substances to continue playing. Corbin Bernsen plays the shortstop whose thoughts are on his investments more than baseball. Wesley Snipes plays an outfielder who is fast but rough. Etc. Rene Russo is Berenger’s former flame in Cleveland, planning to marry a Yuppie (as they were known in those days). The team muddles along, improving, until the GM relates the scheme to the manager who tells the players, which inspires them to make a run for the pennant.

An amusing more than laugh-out-loud comedy. A bit of a product of its time, but not too dated. Worth watching, but I’m not rushing out for the sequels. And note that this is a Tom Berenger movie: his name comes first above the title. Man, he was something in the 1980s and maybe early 1990s, and although he’s been acting continually since, you mostly think this was a Charlie Sheen vehicle, ainna? Corbin Bernsen, the L.A. Law star, is the third on the poster. Not Wesley Snipes, who was not hitting his peak yet.

And, you know, I could have been in the movie. I was in town in the summer of 1988 when they filmed the stadium scenes at Milwaukee County Stadium (I thought it was true, and the scoreboard shots all show television station WTMJ 4 to confirm it). I know that people I knew then went to the stadium and stood in line to sit in the stands while scenes were filmed, but I did not. But I did keep looking in the crowd for people I might have known.

And just saying Milwaukee County Stadium reminds me that I have never been to a baseball stadium that exists today. I’ve been to ball games at Milwaukee County Stadium, but not Miller Park, and I’ve been to games at Busch Stadium (II) but not Busch Stadium (III). It has been a while, and they do change them every couple of decades these days.