‘This is who I am. This is what I do!’

There’s a certain euphoria involved when one, as a viewer, realizes that one of our childhood heroes has actually brought back a character one eulogized as a kid, and has made a film for all those fans out there.

That’s precisely what Rambo (2008) is all about—a film for the fans of a character that has crossed that threshold and entered the realm of an icon.

Like many others, I also can’t believe that it has been over 20 years since the bow-wielding, machine-gun toting, bandanna wearing Rambo made his last appearance. Yes, it made me feel old, because I still remember watching Rambo III on a VHS. I also remember watching First Blood Part II in a small movie theater in Calcutta, called Elite. Don’t know if the hall is still there, considering the plethora of multiplexes mushrooming in the city I was born and brought up in.

I actually watched the Rambo films in reverse chronology. In a sense, it acted as a boon—the manner in which I watched the then-trilogy, that is.

While we are at the subject of fans and Stallone, I might just touch on the other character that he has immortalized—Rocky Balboa—another alter-ego that Stallone himself brought back the year before Rambo. Well, boxing, as a sport, has never caught my fancy, and the only Rocky film that I have ever watched is the immensely forgettable Rocky IV. So, Rocky has never really been entrenched in my mind as deeply as Rambo.

However, of the little bit that I know of Rocky, I find there is a common thread between him and Rambo. One fights inside the ring of a sport, the other within the ring of life. While Rocky salvages victory amidst apparent defeat; Rambo, on the other hand finds defeat amidst apparent victory.

Created by David Morrell, the character of Rambo, to me, is nothing but a depiction of how every individual, irrespective of caste, creed and faith, will ‘kill when pushed’. Violence, as a trait, is inherent in all of us. And the word ‘Rambo’, quite aptly, (thanks to someone, who knows Japanese), supposedly means ‘violent’ (ranbu) in Japanese.

There are two shots in the film where John is seen trying to forge a piece of scrap metal in fire. That, somehow, to me, stands for the character of Rambo. In every film of this quadrilogy, I find how he is trying to salvage what little bit is left of his life. Irrespective of how much this Green Beret tries to stay away from violence, violence has a habit of finding him—violence and danger, as depicted by those cobras we see him catching in the very first sequence of the film.

'War is in your blood', that’s a part of the monologue that goes on in his mind. And Rambo is, nothing short of a killing machine. In a poignant scene towards the end of the film, John sees Sarah (Julie Benz), one of the Christian missionaries he had undertaken his current ‘mission’ to rescue, running towards one of her compatriots, while Rambo stands far away watching her, clutching his wounded shoulder. Caught in someone else’s war, he is, yet again, while his continuing battle with his own self shows no sign of abating.

It might sound a bit far-fetched, but as John and his band of mercenaries undertook a river ride along the Salween river to a Burmese village wherein a group of Christian missionaries, armed with only food and Bibles had been dropped by Rambo himself around 10 days ago have now been taken hostage, I inadvertently started thinking about Captain Benjamin L Willard’s journey to find Colonel Walter E Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. In both cases, where the journey ended, purgatory began.

And Stallone does not pull any punches (pun intended) when it comes to depicting hell. And hell is what this ‘war zone’ named Burma is. The film is gory, bloody, and uber-violent. Then again, every war is. The second half of the film has possibly a higher body count than any mainstream action film I have seen in a long, long time.

But that’s what Rambo is all about. It’s about how even the most faithful of Christians beats an individual to death when faced with the prospect of his own life being snuffed out. And that, possibly, is the reason as a character Rambo will always be iconic.

While First Blood began with this soldier from Special Forces arriving at the interestingly named town of Hope in Washington; Rambo ends with a long shot of him arriving at his hometown of Bowie, Arizona, to his father’s ranch. The similarity in the shots, one thinks, cannot be coincidental. The recluse, reluctant Rambo has at last returned to his hometown, maybe to see if something has, indeed, changed.

And, if it hasn’t…he can always ‘reload’!