Rambo marathon preview: First impressions before 'First Blood'

For no apparent reason my darling girlfriend and I have decided to spend our 1-year anniversary weekend watching all the Rambo movies marathon style. Are we looking to torture ourselves? Hardly.

Here's the thing: I am an unabashed Sylvester Stallone fan. I understand that a lot of (ok most) of his movies are silly and/or stupid. He comes off as ridiculously vain and for much of his career he seems to have put far more effort into maintaining his physique than his acting or writing.

That said, he's one of my all-time favorite action stars. And, when he wants to be (like in most of the Rocky films and Cop Land) he can be a terrific, unbelievably likable actor.

He's far more relatable than Schwarzenegger, not as smug as Bruce Willis and in his best roles he has a great sense of humor about himself.

I think that's why (at least in the past) I have never warmed up to the Rambo films. The character is so humorless and stoic -- and not in a compelling, Batman sort of way.

My Netflix queue

In addition to that, the movies' politics seemed naive at best and reprehensibly reactionary at worst. They seem to be a part of the Reagan era zeitgeist in which Vietnam is re-imagined as a scenario in which Americans were somehow victims and the soldiers were prevented from "finishing the job" by bureaucrats in Washington.

The villains were generic "ethnics"-- not really Vietnamese but just "other". But that's what the series became. It didn't start out that way.

The first film is definitely smaller scale, and so arguably it will likely play better for me. I saw it once, and the blockbuster First Blood: Part II years ago. I've never seen Rambo III and the last, recent reboot, Rambo, impressed me just for the pure audacity of the body count it racked up even if it was somewhat lacking in the character department.

I guess that's why the Rambo movies do appeal to me. I, like any immature boy, enjoy the explosions, the violence and the sheer unapologetic brutality of the franchise. These movies shoot first and ask questions later and sometimes we need that kind of big dumb fun.

Stallone is still desperately trying to cling to his former glory. With the exception of The Expendables movies, which are pretty damn entertaining, his appeal seems to really be slipping. He's certainly still a phenomenal physical specimen even as he approaches 70, but I genuinely wonder if he will ever embrace his age and become the character actor I think he really was born to be.

I have high hopes for Creed, where he will revisit his most iconic (and best) character, Rocky Balboa, but this time in the role of trainer -- he'll be managing the son of his old foe/friend Apollo Creed, who will be played by the excellent Michael B. Jordan. It's going to be conceived and directed by Ryan Coogler, who made one of last year's best films, Fruitvale Station, and it'll be a more down to earth role for Stallone instead of larger-than-life.

Still, I intend to sit back and enjoy the inflated, muscle-bound Stallone of his '80s heyday, as he has become something of an affectionate relic of a bygone age that we can now look back on fondly since we no longer have to live through its excesses.