What is this movie that has nothing to do with Rambo?

January 4, 2015 1:36 PM

For years now I've been relating a recollection that I now know is incorrect. I thought that there was a film called John Rambo which is not an action movie, but a movie about the former warfighter aging and dealing with PTSD surrounding the extreme violence that he witnessed and inflicted in his life. What movie am I thinking of, if any?

My recollection was emphatic that this was not about some hypothetical action hero or depiction of a real-world soldier, but THE John Rambo and the ramifications of the previous movies. This doesn't exist, come to find out, but what movie did I see that implanted this false memory? Or should I get to work on a screenplay (because this is a movie I want to see)?

posted by cmoj to Media & Arts (7 answers total)

Are you maybe mixing Rambo up with The Wrestler with Mickey Rourke because both men have had bad plastic surgery and 'roid overdoses?
posted by srboisvert at 2:04 PM on January 4, 2015

Maybe you're implanting Rambo into Jacob's Ladder?
posted by bjrn at 2:09 PM on January 4, 2015

Best answer: Is this a movie you saw, or did you just hear about it?

If you just heard about it, maybe it was this extended cut of Rambo that was called John Rambo.
posted by ernielundquist at 2:42 PM on January 4, 2015

The 2008 Rambo perhaps?
posted by KateViolet at 2:51 PM on January 4, 2015

Best answer: Could it actually be a somewhat altered memory of First Blood? That does end with Rambo raging about the horrors of war and the shoddy treatment he has received since coming home, after which he breaks down crying.
posted by kyrademon at 3:21 PM on January 4, 2015

Response by poster: I think it has to be a combination of the rant in First blood, which I now remember was somewhat surprising, the 2008 John Rambo, and JCVD. All of these things ring part of a bell about my concocted movie.
posted by cmoj at 5:37 PM on January 4, 2015

FWIW, on reading your question my mind went to the relatively recent Michael Caine film Harry Brown, in which Caine plays a 'widowed Royal Marines veteran, who had served in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, living on a London housing estate that is rapidly descending into youth crime'. My brain always connects this film with Caine's earlier spy films (e.g. The Ipcress File and Funeral in Berlin) in which he played a character called Harry Palmer.

But it sounds like you've found your answer.
posted by EXISTENZ IS PAUSED at 5:59 PM on January 4, 2015