 Rambo:
Spiritual Cinema?
While doing a search
for press releases with the words "spiritual cinema" in
them, guess what came up #1?
Rambo IV: Holy War!
It's interesting to read
the article and it's implied twist that this is a deeply spiritual
script . . .
First Blood
Author Praises Rambo IV: Holy War treatment
The creator of the film icon, Rambo, has highly praised the high-concept
treatment developed by media production company, Alpha1Media, for
the fourth part of the Rambo film saga, ‘Rambo IV: Holy War’.
(PRWEB) April 1, 2005
-- David Morrell, best-selling author of ‘First Blood’
with its lead character Rambo, commended the film treatment currently
being touted as the fourth installment in the Rambo film franchise
as being “impressive and remarkably well researched.’
The premise of the equally-popular and controversial treatment envisages
John J. Rambo now working at the United Nations, when Islamist terrorists
hijack the institution holding the world ransom. Rambo tries to
take the terrorists down, knowing that his Afghani-adopted son,
Tomask, is part of the terrorist mission. The commendation marks
another major step in reviving the 1980s’ action film franchise
which has generated $2 billion dollars at the global box office
and created an icon in global popular culture.
Praising the treatment’s
understanding of the sensitive relationship between contemporary
global geo-political situation and its impact on human spirituality,
Morrell says “Alpha1Media’s ambitions to give the character
some meaning are commendable.” Continuing the trend of recent
films like Tom Cruise’s ‘The Last Samurai’, the
title of the treatment, ‘Holy War’, refers primarily
to the spiritual warfare of the archetypal warrior-sage found in
ancient religious cultures, with Rambo perceived as its modern archetype.
Morrell is the successful
author of twenty-four books, with eighteen million copies in print
which have been translated into twenty-two languages, including
such acclaimed action thrillers as The Fifth Profession, Assumed
Identity, and Extreme Denial. Renowned as the father of the contemporary
action thriller, Morrell wrote First Blood, a novel about a returned
Vietnam veteran, John Rambo, suffering from post-trauma stress disorder
that comes into conflict with a small-town police chief and fights
his own version of the Vietnam War, in 1972. In Morrell’s
own words, ‘I wanted to write about a character who brings
the war to the United States.’ Based on the novel, 1981’s
film First Blood ignited cinema screens worldwide with Sylvester
Stallone portraying the lead character, leading to two blockbuster
sequels. The character of Rambo was last seen in cinema screens
in 1988’s Rambo III, itself dedicated to the ‘valiant
Afghan people’ and which saw the iconic super-soldier assisting
the Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviet occupation.
Admired for his exhaustive
research, Morrell has also been trained in firearms, hostage negotiation,
assuming identities, executive protection, and anti-terrorist driving,
among numerous other action skills that he describes in his novels.
However, it is his subtle understanding of human relationships which
has extended his global readership over the past decades, not only
ably demonstrated in novels such as Desperate Measures, but also
in his haunting memoirs, Fireflies: A Father’s Tale of Love
and Loss. As Morrell wrote the novelisations for the subsequent
installments of the Rambo saga, and retains the print rights to
the character, film industry analysts perceive the author’s
involvement as being invaluable in developing the fourth installment
of the fourth Rambo film to its full potential.
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