Screen:
O'Brien, Tom
SCREEN NATURAL MEN, II/III 'CROCODILE' & 'RAMBO' Will someone please explain to me the one charming idiosyncracy marking our national affliction of pictures-bythe-numbers? Why are some...
...The film opens with him in a Thai Buddhist monastery...
...His jokes all include a knowing wink: hey, mate, join in my fun...
...Hogan shaped Mick Dundee's persona, and to a degree shares in it...
...The film cost $60 million to make, ten times the price tag for Croc II...
...Once in Croc I, Mick Dundee tells his lady that he feels God inhabits the Australian wilderness...
...Of this nostalgia, Hogan is the prophet and reaps the profit...
...Still, once the Evil Russian (Marc de Jonge) captures Crenna, it's sayonara to Satyagraha...
...Action is slow to unfold, romance is muted, and the jokes on nature vs...
...Too bad he can't lure Rocky/Rambo to the outback and teach him a lesson...
...On television, China Beach, The Dirty Dozen, and Supercarrier smoothly replaced ailing shows this spring as if readied in reponse to public receptivity...
...The best scene involves Japanese tourists who mistake Hogan for Clint Eastwood...
...Stallone's humor, unlike Hogan's, is never intentional...
...The film's second half has better pacing: hero and heroine return to Walkabout Creek to escape the meanies...
...With judicious footwork, Rocky/Rambo reversed directions, and now sides with the Islamic fundamentalists-after all, they fight against Russians, no...
...his assumption was that we should have won, just as we always did before...
...Basic to the plot of Croc I was Linda Koslowski, the pert American reporter who challenged Dundee's acumen but needed his rescue in scrape after scrape in the rugged bush country where he fished, earned his nickname fighting predators, and knew every nook and cranny like a down-under Dan'l Boone...
...Hogan and Koslowski get involved with Colombian drug dealers-who doesn't in film, these days...
...It also caps a trend Sylvester Stallone may be credited with starting, the return of war to the national cultural agenda...
...There seems no difference in quality: Poltergeist III is as bad as Nightmare on Elm Street 5. Perhaps Roman numerals originated with heroic associations: they are used for kings, popes, and Super Bowls...
...It had to be scrapped when Irangate broke...
...Much of the cost results from blowing up tanks and helicopters in the fiery Apocalypse that follows Rambo's reentry into action...
...The line is good light humor on naivete\ but is not unbelievable...
...Does he believe in God and heaven, she asks...
...His virtue lies in softening frontier images with casual but genuine decency: a John Wayne with an accent and sense of humor...
...Mick Dundee is our latest naif "holy man...
...But recognition is only the first step in therapy, understanding the second, and of this, as each Rambo movie reminds us, there is precious little...
...Or used to-until the Soviet withdrawal...
...TOM O'BRIEN...
...He becomes her knight in shining, well, snakeskin...
...Interestingly, the initial screenplay for /// had Rambo fighting Iranians...
...He'd better pray peace doesn't break out and halt his film career...
...Pop audiences like their romanticism straightforward, and Paul Hogan delivers...
...When Stallone asked his fateful stab-in-the-back question about Vietnam in Rambo II, "This time, do we get to win...
...Needless to say, the evildoers make the mistake of attacking Mick on his home turf, where he calls on nature (especially bats, lizards, and aborigines) and wins the day...
...He also still uses bow-and-arrows to wreak his ever-so-reluctant vengeance...
...HBO has aired the fine Dear America and there is more...
...SCREEN NATURAL MEN, II/III 'CROCODILE' & 'RAMBO' Will someone please explain to me the one charming idiosyncracy marking our national affliction of pictures-bythe-numbers...
...Why are some sequels titled with Roman rather than Arabic numerals...
...Australia beckons us with memories of our own frontier-and the Westerns that mythologize it...
...suppose he was shot at with one of Ollie's missiles...
...Except for stick fighting for prize money (all proceeds donated to the monks), Rambo has renounced violence and resists the appeals of his old army boss (Richard Crenna) to help run weapons across the Pakistan border...
...Stallone still wears his Geronimo-style headband, and performs some self first-aid that somewhat resembles Chuck Connors's at the end of Apache...
...In ads or films, Hogan presents an appealing persona: confident but not cocksure, rugged-looking but smooth (even cordial) of voice, tough but chivalric, triumphant but not violent...
...Witness, despite differences of style and content, recent films like Top Gun, Hamburger Hill, Platoon, and the upcoming Nam...
...civilization are predictable...
...Croc II follows up on the surprising success of its original, which nudged unexpectantly into the market in 1985, and kangaroo-jumped its way to $400 million in profits...
...Hogan is a better comedian, natural man, and...
...Rambo III treads more heavily across darker ground, Afghanistan...
...She can't help but fall in love-especially when he triumphs again in New York through the honesty and simplicity of his "natural" behavior...
...icon...
...Last fall CBS began airing Tour of Duty, a grunt's eye view of Vietnam...
...This summer, in any case, no one tries harder to carry off those heroic associations than Crocodile Dundee II and Rambo III...
...Some media pundits claim the new attention to war, especially our loss in Vietnam, marks maturity...
...Croc II matches Mick Dundee and crime melodrama...
...But his "natural man" is as fake as his overstated sanctity: the arrows are explosive-tipped...
...Sure, he responds: "There, He and me'll be mates...
...Indeed, he restored a sense of conservative order not just by triumphing over his enemies, but triumphing over women, albeit in a friendly way...
...Rambo III marks the third time (after // and Rocky IV) that Stallone has gone toe to toe with the Russkies...
Vol. 115 • June 1988 • No. 12
