Rambo Shot Down Over the Atlantic

Being an enthusiastic and longtime reader of David Morrell’s fiction, I was looking forward to taking in the fourth Rambo movie, which as I reported earlier, had been set to open in the UK this last weekend. However, as the London Times reported things went slightly awry:

Small town sheriffs, sadistic Russian torturers and genocidal child-raping Burmese warlords: John Rambo has taken them all on, grunted a bit and then crushed them single-handed.

But Sylvester Stallone’s avenging icon has finally met his match--in the unlikely guise of Britain’s largest cinema chain.

Odeon shocked the film industry yesterday when it announced that it would not show Rambo, the fourth film about the musclebound Vietnam war veteran, at its theatres this weekend.

The chain cited undisclosed “commercial reasons” for its decision, which has angered Stallone fans, especially those in rural areas where the only local cinema is an Odeon.

Consolidation of the British movie theater industry has left Odeon Cinemas as the only game in town in many parts of the country. At first, I supposed that the Rambo cancellation had to do with this film’s extreme violence, which has been reported on in the press. But it seems other factors were in play:

Twenty years have passed since Rambo’s last outing, in which the ultimate symbol of belligerent American interventionism teamed up with the Mujahidin in Afghanistan to lay waste to the Red Army.

Unlike the first two films, First Blood and Rambo: First Blood Part II, the film was a box office disappointment, grossing $53 million in the U.S. (£27 million) on a production budget of $64 million (£33 million).

Stallone blames perestroika. “Two weeks before the film comes out, Gorbachev comes over and gives Reagan a hug, kisses Nancy on the cheek and now I’m a Red-baiter.”

However, last year Stallone was praised widely for rekindling his other classic character in Rocky Balboa.

Its success made the return of Rambo for one last crazed mission inevitable.

You’ll find the full Times article here.