Word: rambo
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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SEEKING DIVORCE. Sylvester Stallone, 41, blood-and-guts, hero-as-underdog actor-producer whose Rocky and Rambo films have grossed more than $1 billion; and Brigitte Nielsen, 24, statuesque (6 ft.) Danish model and actress (Red Sonja, Beverly Hills Cop II); on the ground of irreconcilable differences; after 19 months of marriage; in Los Angeles...
...naivete is now touched by madness, a sort of stressed-out schizophrenia. On the one hand he has turned his apartment into a greenhouse where he croons gently to his hundreds of houseplants; on the other he has assembled a collection of heavy weaponry that Rambo (whose posters also decorate his pad) might envy. It may be, in fact, that the blissful look that crosses his kindly face when he lays hands on a rocket launcher in a situation that compels its immediate use is the comic high point of this sequel. Anyway, he provides a high, sweet note...
...this indicates some sort of twisted mentality on the part of the creators of this film, director Walter Hill and co-writer John Milius. When a movie features contributions by people whose previous work includes Red Dawn, Rambo, First Blood Part 2 and Streets Of Fire, the emerging world-view would have to be a little skewed. Skewed, however, does not even come close to describing the world of Extreme. The motto here is not "liberty and justice for all," but "we didn't hurt him none, we just roughed...
Even so, the "departure" provisions are too broad for the sole dissenting commission member, Rutgers Law Professor Paul Robinson, who charges ! that the report is riddled with loopholes. "If Congress asked for Rambo," he says, "what it got was Don Knotts." Counters Commission Member Stephen Breyer, a federal appeals judge: "Departures shouldn't occur that often." When they do, he adds, the reasons that judges give "will be analyzed, and the guidelines will be refined." The new system is scheduled to go into effect in November, but the commission, which is a permanent body, has recommended that Congress delay implementation...
Another powerful image: Wall Street millionaires arrested for insider trading and taken off in handcuffs. Not long ago, the "go for it" mentality of untrammeled capitalism was a virtue in the culture of Reaganism. Now that culture is being questioned. The Rambo story, which was a cartoon of Reaganism's individualist machismo, has been discredited by the escapades of Oliver North. The enduring ghost of Viet Nam returns not in the cretinous revenge fantasies of Sylvester Stallone but in Platoon, a movie that confronts the ambiguous mess and tragedy of America's mission in Viet Nam. The show that...