More Rambo

Some takes on Rambo as a political picture.

Is it about Iraq or not?

I must answer this political questions as a filmmaker. Some movies transcend entertainment and can become political, educational, and/or social. If this is true, the opposite must also be true. I do not know the antithesis or antonym of transcend...I suppose descend, but that's not quite right. Rambo, the newest one, (for lack of a better word), descends the political. It is of such poor, campy quality, it cannot be seriously be discussed as a political picture. It would be akin to calling an impossibly boring political stump speech entertainment.

One of the problems in both our entertainment and political culture is the attempt to politicize everything, as if every issue could be dumbed down to have two sides, rather than approaching politics as a simple problem-solving manner. Nothing could be worse for films. If every film were conceived or evaluated as a picture representing left wing or right wing values, it would spell the hijacking of American movies political operatives. It is a reflection of polarization of our political culture mixed with the dumbed down Ebert, thumbs up/thumbs down, style of criticism.

It is the political, more than the money and market, spilling into films at the conception stage, which will ruin the art.