You and whose army? Rambo returns to a cinema near you next year.
Next summer, American movie-goers are set to bask in warm and heady nostalgia. Yet it won't be the bucolic Dazed and Confused mid-70s providing the reminiscence, or the cosy Pleasantville 50s. Instead, it's the grisly 80s that are on the way back - specifically, their action heroes.
Currently scheduled for release next May is Rambo IV - or, to give the project its full, cod-mythic title, Rambo IV: In The Serpent's Eye. It would appear that springing Rocky from mothballs in the upcoming Rocky Balboa is not enough Memory Lane for Sylvester Stallone; he's now exhuming walking bloodbath John Rambo, last seen grunting into the sunset 18 years ago. Then, a month later, will arrive Live Free or Die Hard, the fourth installment in the longtime cryrogenically frozen franchise, wherein Bruce Willis will reprise his signature role as rogue cop John McClane, forever having a doozy of bad day.
Audiences may, of course, find a comic note in the creaking spectacle of the 51 year-old Willis and 60 year-old Stallone getting a bit handy. But for anyone wondering whether age might wither the fundamental MO of Rambo and McClane, the answer would seem that, for both, it's very much business as (formerly) usual.
The aspirin-guzzling McClane is, apparently, to tackle 'internet terrorists'. While their provenance is vague, it doesn't take too vast a leap of imagination to wonder what flavour of cyber-dastardlies keen supporter of the Iraqi war Willis might have on his hands. The plot of Rambo IV: Into The Serpent's Eye, meanwhile, remains an as yet foggy jumble of Burmese ne'er-do-wells and bloody wrath.
What is known is that the project is, inexplicably, no longer titled Rambo IV: Holy War - and that the original storyline of Rambo venturing into Afghanistan to hunt down Osama has, equally oddly, been abandoned. A shame: it would have provided the two with a chance to catch up, Stallone having spent Rambo III helping out the Mujahadeen.
From the perspective of the stars, the logic of 'why now?' is obvious. Stallone has spent the greater part of the last two decades bumbling about in search of a purpose post-Rocky and Rambo; for the hapless Sly, all roads were ultimately bound to circle back here. Equally, while Willis has had the benefit of a big-league career in the company of hot directors since shelving John McClane, it's been a long stretch indeed since the career nitro of The Sixth Sense - and one suspects the likes of Lucky Number Slevin and The Whole Ten Yards may have failed to prove quite the box-office triumphs their star could do with.
But in a broader sense, it still seems peculiar that two thirds of the triptych of 80s action strongmen should be returning all but simultaneously - Arnold Schwarzenegger having, of course, graduated from slaughtering extras in Terminator to overseeing the execution of death row prisoners as Governor of California.
Timing, however, is everything. And there could rarely be a better time for two clapped-out bruisers to reach for their Uzis than in an era of such dazed cynicism as this. After all, it was in response to a similar distress signal of mass despondency that their alter-egos experienced their heydays. While Rambo may have emerged amid (and come to symbolise) Reaganite sabre-rattling, his success actually had more to do with the bleak era that preceded it - in particular, the humiliations of Vietnam; humiliations grimly avenged in the notorious Rambo: First Blood Part II, with its trigger-happy rescues of missing POWs and apparent challenge to the very outcome of the war.
For Die Hard, appearing in 1988 as Reagan exited the White House, the appeal was just as evident - with the piratical optimism of the preceding years having become mired in the grubby squelch of Iran-Contra and the drabber, hungover age of Bush I underway, John McClane's buccaneering was already an exercise in nostalgia.
So the twin comebacks make perfect sense. Rather than reflecting a bullish swagger among the US public, the muscle-bound action goon actually takes his cue when their mood has soured into grievance and disillusionment, and a cheerleader is needed, preferably one with a gun and a grudge. After the bipolar frenzy of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Bruce and Sly's re-appearance seems, in fact, almost inevitable - their portraits of morally infallible American good guys seeming the purest escapism the movies could currently offer.
It wouldn't be the same were newer, younger models stepped into the breach. After all, the pitch here is simple - that Willis and Stallone have been the lunks who saved the day many (many) times before. To see them do the same again should (or at least this is the theory) be as comforting to audiences as a thumb in the mouth and a favourite blankey. The west wants its daddy - or, at least, that's what the stars are hoping.
We can only hope Steven Seagal isn't reading this.
