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ahead and cry. There is no shame |
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Rambo First Blood Part II has the best dialogue in film history. That’s right, I said it and no, I’m not huffin’ paint right now. Every single word that comes out of character’s mouths is SOLID GOLD. Not like phony gold coin chocolates at all, but like a sparkly necklace around Biggie Small’s thick neck. Written by the Italian Stallion himself, Slyvester Stallone and Titanic- and robots-obsessed lunatic Oscar-winner James Cameron, the film contains so many classic, inspiring, flag-waving lines that it has made some people’s hands fall asleep and hair to fall out. Heck, everyone involved in its production was a master of the macho. It was produced by a guy with the first name Buzz, for cryin’ out loud! No other movie in the history of film has oozed so much pure machismo power than this here 1985 Rambo flick. No other theatrical movie has featured as many fully clothed sweaty men in slightly intimate situations in a jungle setting. No other movie has a sweaty guy shooting a jacked-up turbo machine gun at a bunch of poor defenseless computers. Yes, my friends, there is only one Rambo and it is glorious. Rambo First Blood Part II (or RFBP2 as absolutely nobody but me calls it) starts out by charging through the gate with a huge explosion. BLAM! Just as you get all settled in with your Milk Duds and soda, RFBP2 blasts you out of your seat. It may seem rude, but hey, listen up, cuz that’s Rambo’s way. After the explosion, we see a bunch of sweaty guys (a constant in this film) hitting rocks with hammers. I know this is supposed to be some kind of prisoner work thing, but I wonder just what these guys are actually accomplishing by hitting these rocks besides working up a sweat and looking tough. Among these men, is the poofy-poofy-haired vigilante John Rambo, who as we all were taught in school, is played by the Italian Stallion himself Sylvester (Sly) Stallone. One can often forget that this slurring big-haired goon is the same guy who wrote one of the greatest American screenplays, the original Rocky, and only remember that somehow a decade later he was a guy named Lincoln Hawk arm-wrestling and driving around in a big rig in Satan’s favorite film, Over the Top. Anyhoo, Rambo gets out of jail and is sent back to a fake corny-looking Vietnam filled with Styrofoam statues of Buddha to rescue people, get sweaty, kill lots of bees and snakes and blow up gigantic helicopters with one arrow. To add a bit of dramatic flair to the whole thing, Rambo has to deal with some of the greatest villains ever seen on screen. You see, Rambo is dealing with a lot of pain because he is constantly getting screwed over by guys perspiring so much they look like four-day-old glazed donuts. First off you have the wonderfully named jerk character Marshall Murdock who is gracefully portrayed by Charles Napier. Murdock spends most of the movie sweating, complaining about the heat, eating sandwiches, smoking cigars and pissing off John Rambo. On the other side, you’ve got the outrageously sadistic Russian bad guy Podovsky played by Steven Berkoff who tortures Rambo by dropping him spanking nude in a gross mud puddle filled with leeches! COLD BLOODED! You don’t have to be the styrofoam Buddha to figure out that Rambo escapes from all mud puddles, rescues folks and blows up anyone who gets in his way. What makes his quest so much fun to watch is the bed-wetting, jaw-dropping and totally mind-stimulating dialog. To keep with the theme of this issue’s top ten lists, I hereby offer the top ten lines of armpit-drip mondo macho dialog from Rambo First Blood Part II. 10.
“Sir, do we get to win this time?” According to legend, Cameron hammered the RFBP2 screenplay in three months, while he also wrote Aliens and his final draft of the original Terminator. He must have been getting in a lot of bar fights during this period, as all three screenplays share a common all-out ass-kicking theme. (Also according to legend, he didn’t eat for weeks and came up with the concept of The Terminator during a food-deprived hallucination.) Mr. Cameron couldn’t be reached for questions as he is still hanging out underwater in some pod going around the Titanic. RFBP2 was directed by George Pan Cosmatos, who went on to direct the Italian Stallion once again in the cheese-puff classic Cobra and the tough-as-nails western Tombstone. Cosmatos, who appears to have falled off the planet Earth, appears on the DVD as a wheezy fat dude wearing tinted sunglasses and going on and on about the color of grass on the film’s commentary track. During the DVD’s interview segment, be sure to shield small childrens’ eyes when Mr. Stallone appears on screen, as he now seems to have been replaced by a talking wax sculpture, featuring grotesquely giant drawn on eyebrows, of his former self. As much as RFBP2 is looked upon today as a dusty relic from an era many would like us to return to, it also stands up proudly as one of the most perfect, heinous and beautifully stupid action movies ever made. At the film’s conclusion, when Rambo shows up and yells like wounded bear while he unloads his machine gun on a bunch of computers, still strikes me as deserving a gold medal in the totally wicked movie Olympics. We can all learn from John Rambo. To be sweaty at all times and blow up computers and helicopters because they are bad. As we go into this new year, we should always remember the lyrics of the song “Peace in my Life,” sung by the immortal Frank Stallone as it plays over the end credits and Rambo walks off into the sunset and Rambo III..... Peace
in my life, |
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