In 1982, Sylvester Stallone was first seen in his signature role as Vietnam veteran John Rambo. After appearing in Part 1 as a traumatized war returnee trying in vain to leave the horrors of the battlefield behind, Rambo had already been transformed into a martial fighting machine in the sequel, “Rambo II – The Order.” “What most people call hell, he calls home,” was not only a telling line in the film, but also the advertising slogan. Only in the last film in the franchise so far – the otherwise rather uninspired ‘Rambo: Last Blood’ from 2019 – did the hard shell of the one-man army begin to crack again, after all, Stallone was now 73 years old.
When you ask the ‘Rocky’ star what movie he’s most proud of, he actually says a movie from the ‘Rambo’ series – but neither the opening film directed by Ted Kotcheff, nor the most recent ‘Rambo’ hit, but ‘John Rambo’ (2008), which Stallone himself directed exactly 20 years after the third part. According to himself, the ultra-brutal action fireworks are his best film – although he initially had doubts whether it would find its way to the cinema…
In the fourth film in the series, John Rambo has essentially renounced violence, but then finds himself caught between the fronts of the Burmese civil war. The result is a real battle record, which in Germany was only given the age rating “18+” in a slightly shortened version. To coincide with the DVD and Blu-ray release, the uncut version ended up on the index – and was not re-released until September 2023.
Stallone suspected in advance that the high level of violence in ‘John Rambo’ would cause controversy. ‘I was criticized because the film was too violent’the 77 year old said in an interview with . ‘And he’s violent. He’s cruel. Children are burned alive. This makes the civil war worse than anything else. It’s your neighbor who suddenly kills you. I was very happy with this film and never thought it would ever be released in theaters. I thought, ‘They’ll never show it!'”
The actor also refers to “John Rambo” as “[einen] Film I’m really proud of – It’s the best action movie I’ve ever made because it’s the most true story.” While some critics tore it up as violent pornography, Stallone believes that “John Rambo” simply shows the horrors of the Civil War in an unvarnished way. All that remains is to convince yourself again whether “John Rambo” is an exploitation or just a suitably brutal depiction of the atrocities of war.