Sylvester Stallone's latest installment in the Rambo series is a winner. Up until now, First Blood was my favorite, but this one has the action of two and three with the character development of the first one. When I first heard that there was going to be another Rambo movie, I was very skeptical, but after I heard Stallone's interview on Rush Limbaugh's show, I decided to give it a go. I'm glad I did. It's not for the fainthearted. It clearly deserves the R rating assigned to it. The carnage is frequent and explicit. There is some partial nudity, but it's brief, and not erotic. Stallone, although in great physical condition for a man his age, does not try to hide his age. In fact, it is part of the story. I give him kudos for that.

The story is set in the middle of a real-life, decades-long civil war currently going on in Burma. Rambo, who is hunting snakes for the seedy gambling and tourism trade in Thailand, is approached by some American Christian medical missionaries who are attempting to get into Burma to help a tribe caught in the genocidal war. There wouldn't be a story if nothing went wrong, so something does, and Rambo has to decide if he's going to do what he does best.

Speaking for my fellow audience members, this story strikes a nerve in a very visceral way. It's one of the few times in my movie-going life, that I heard people cheering. Americans, who like winners, conversely hate losing. This story appeals to that sensibility without glossing over the idea of killing another human being. I heard a friend, a former Marine combat veteran in Vietnam, say recently that there are some bad guys that need killing. Halfway through this movie I was thinking the same thing. In our post-911 world, those in trouble don't go to France, Chile, Spain, Iceland, or Sweden. They come to the United States of America. They want Jack Bauer or John Rambo, because those characters know what to do with bad guys.

I'm sure that the effite, intellectual snobs, as Spiro Agnew called them, will hate this movie. I don't care, because they don't and won't understand how this story appeals to Americans. I hope that this movie is successful, if for no other reason than the attention it will bring to the atrocities currently being perpetrated in Burma. I hope this movie helps clarify the issue in our political arena. When a bad guy has his knife to your throat, who do you want to call for help? John McCain? He's more worried about what the world thinks than our safety. I'll take John Rambo.

3:10 to Yuma has an interesting scene that is a lesson in appeasing tyrants and madmen. The good guys are holed up in a Yuma hotel with the bad guy (Russell Crowe's character, Ben Wade) as their prisoner. Seven surviving members of his gang arrive in town to free him. The local sheriff and his two deputies join with the good guys to get Ben Wade to the train station, spouting the importance of maintaining the rule of law. Outside on the street, the gang members up the ante, by offering anyone in town $200 cash for each one of Ben Wade's captors they kill. Faced with these odds, the sheriff has second thoughts, and backs out, claiming that he had family, and wasn't prepared to die that day. He and his deputies walk out the front door of the hotel, and lay down their weapons in front of the seven gang members who are lined up side by side while mounted on their horses. As soon as the sheriff and his deputies raise up from laying down their weapons, the bad guys empty their guns on them.

It rather reminds me of what the Nazi's did to those who sought to appease them in 1938. It's also a lesson in what will happen if we, as infidels, seek to appease the islamofascist terrorists. I appreciate Hollywood showing us that object lesson in foreign diplomacy.