Saving the Day...A Righteous Victory?

The Rambo franchise is a fantasy of total war whose very power derives from its nonspecificity. The only consistent message from film to film is "Rambo kills meanies with extreme prejudice";....

I don't doubt that Sylvester Stallone feels for the people of Burma. Still, setting his film there is a convenient way of allowing us the satisfaction of a righteous victory without finding a way for John Rambo to intervene in Iraq, where (at least for American audiences) the moral math is far harder to do. Saving blond missionaries and innocent Christian villagers from oily, swaggering rapists is a mission anyone can get behind. Figuring out how to bring peace in the Middle East through the application of overwhelming force?

[via Slate; HT: Streak's Blog]