Word: rambo
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...amuse yourself with the film's budget, which some say was $63 million -- with about a quarter of that going to Sylvester Stallone. The producers insist that the excess was nowhere near so wretched, but Rambo III is still probably among the most expensive movies in history. So you naturally get to thinking that for such an investment the filmmakers ought to be able to come up with some scenery or spectacle more entrancing than sun and firelight glinting off Sly Stallone's ever rippling muscles...
...amuse yourself with the mythology. Once, history tells us, entire societies were organized around warrior cults. The leaders were austere fellows like John Rambo, who kept to themselves, refusing to acknowledge pain or break training. They must have indulged in such mundane activities as sleep, sex and food, but never in front of the peasants...
...cults are all gone now, and all that is left is Rambo, here coming around for the third time. This lone figure -- pushed to the social margin, lost in self-absorption -- is apparently capable of awakening and satisfying an atavistic yearning for heroic purity in so many hearts that he is, in movie terms, cost effective no matter what the price...
What few are likely to find amusing is Rambo III's story line. For a novelty, the superhero this time is discovered not aroil but tranquil, living in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand. Sure, he occasionally indulges in the local sport of stick fighting to keep in trim, but mostly he enjoys the silence and the sunsets. When his mentor and only friend, Colonel Sam Trautman (Richard Crenna), is captured by a particularly disagreeable Soviet officer while trying to aid the Afghan rebels, Rambo is recalled to primitive business as usual. There are, of course, low cunning, high explosives...
Shooting instructors observe that women view guns more coldly, and cautiously, than do men. Some suggest that women make better shots. "Men come in with all sorts of bad habits," says Michael Freire of the Tamiami Range and Gun Shop in Florida. "They see themselves as either Rambo, Roy Rogers or Daniel Boone." Women, he adds, take their time in learning to shoot. "Discipline is the whole point of training," explains Carol Kolen, a Chicago psychologist who has taken shooting lessons. "It gives me the feeling that I could take care of myself." Most female gun owners, say police officials...