Rambo III

Believe me RAMBO FIRST BLOOD PART 2 took some swallowing but the opening ten minutes of RAMBO 3 caused me to fall out of my chair in shock . John Rambo does prize fighting to earn his keep in a Buddhist commune ! I mean that`s a bit like having a film where the hero`s an environmentalist who goes around blowing oil rigs to save the Alaskan wilderness . Oh wait a minute didn`t Steven Seagal ....

Despite this incredible and vain attempt at character development there follows much dialogue that accurately reflects what is going on in Afghanistan in the mid 1980s . The Soviet - Afghan war actually intensified when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power and by that time over one million Afghans had died in the conflict while as many as five million had been forced over the border into Iran and Pakistan as what analysts at the time called " Migratory genocide " , a euphemism that people nowadays would describe as " Ethnic cleansing " . There`s other parts of the film that points out that screenwriter Sheldon Lettich has done his homework on the conflict with factual things like Soviet conscripts defecting to the Mujahedeen , of the red army planting mines and booby traps disguised as toys to blow off the limbs of children and of the Soviets use of chemical weapons which almost certainly proves that the sloppy script of FIRST BLOOD PART 2 was mainly down to James Cameron than Stallone , but as you`d expect in this type of action adventure movie the script rapidly degenerates into a series of set pieces of an all American superman blowing up a bunch of nasty commies who can`t shoot straight . Ah well at least the main commie isn`t played by a British actor unlike in the last film . Oh and congratulations to Peter McDonald for at least trying to make a Puma helicopter look like a Soviet helicopter gunship . The previous director was under the impression that the Soviets and Viet Cong use American Hueys

Setting the record straight : A lot of people prove how ignorant they are of the Soviet - Afghan war by confusing the Mujahedeen with the Taliban . The Mujahedeen ( Translated " The soldiers of God " ) and the Taliban ( Translated " The students of God " ) are entirely seperate things . The Taliban were created in Pakistan in the early 1990s , took over Afghanistan in 1995 and were led by Mullah Omar . The Mujahedeen were split into several different groups and were led by different leaders ( None of them called Bin Laden ) most of them forming a coalition against the Taliban called the Northern Alliance in 1995/96 . Their overall leader was the legendary guerilla leader Ahmad Shah Massoud who was murdered in a suicide bombing by Al Qai`da terrorists in September 2001 . It was the Northern Alliance who fought side by side with the Western coalition during their campaign to overthrow the Taliban government in 2001 to the present day