Movie Review: Rambo III (1988)

DIRECTOR: Peter MacDonald. CAST: Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Kurtwood Smith, Marc de Jonge, Sasson Gabai, Doudi Shoua, Spiros Forcas, Randy Raney, Marcus Gilbert, Alon Abutbul, Mahmoud Assadollahi, Yosef Shiloah.

This third installment finds John Rambo at peace with himself, living in a Buddhist monastery and taking on locals in stick fights to pay bills. Colonel Trautman visits him and asks that he join in a CIA-sponsored mission to aid anti-Soviet freedom fighters in Afghanistan, but Rambo says no. His war is over…until Russian troops catch Trautman on the Afghan border and imprison him. Rambo comes out of retirement to rescue the colonel and show the mujahideen how to stomp out commie scum the American way. Rambo III was the most expensive action movie ever made at one point ($62 million) and the big budget certainly helps, as it is much more entertaining than First Blood Part II.

Movie Review: Robocop (1987)

DIRECTOR: Paul Verhoeven. CAST: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Ronny Cox, Kurtwood Smith, Miguel Ferrer, Dan O'Herlihy, Paul McCrane, Ray Wise, Jesse D. Goins, Calvin Jung, Michael Gregory, Robert DoQui, Felton Perry, Lee de Broux, S.D. Nemeth.
Robocop remains a great action movie and a brilliant satirizing of Reagan-era corporate greed and excess. We see Detroit falling apart in a dystopian future in which the mayor has turned over control of its underfunded police department to the megacorporation Omni Consumer Products. OCP plans to privatize all of the city’s services, including replacing its cops with androids programmed for perfectly efficient law enforcement. They construct RoboCop from the remains of an officer killed in the line of duty by Detroit’s criminal mastermind. RoboCop successfully takes down a number of bad guys, but things go awry when he begins to experience shadowy memories of his previous life. He focuses on bringing his murderer to justice, which also leads him back to the very corporation that made him. Robocop’s greatness lies in the details that separate it from the typical ‘80s shoot-‘em-up action movie. Who could forget “I’d buy that for a dollar!” from everyone’s favorite TV slapstick sex comedy It's Not My Problem? Kurtwood Smith and Ronny Cox steal the show in their inspired character performances. Make sure you also watch the director’s cut that originally garnered an X rating due to the gratuitous violence!