RAIN MAN (1988)--Directed by Barry Levinson. Stars Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise, Valeria Golino. Hoffman won a Best Actor Oscar as Raymond Babbitt, an autistic man who travels cross-country with his much younger brother Charlie (Cruise). Charlie is a smooth-talking car salesman, who learns of his brother's existence when their father dies and leaves Raymond everything. The two brothers learn to love each other in this offbeat road movie. Winner of four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director and Original Screenplay (Ron Bass).

THE RAINMAKER (1997)--Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Stars Matt Damon, Danny DeVito, Jon Voight, Claire Danes. The most enjoyable film adaptation of a John Grisham novel yet, thanks to some colorful performances by an excellent supporting cast, assured direction and a nice sense of humor. Grisham's novel was about a young lawyer named Rudy Baylor--as the story opens, he hasn't yet taken the bar exam--who files a lawsuit against a giant insurance company on behalf of a decent white-trash family whose son is dying of leukemia and whose life may have been saved if the insurance company had made good the family's claim. Rudy also becomes involved with a sweet teen being abused by her softball-playing husband.

By jettisoning just a few minor characters and subplots, Coppola's screenplay manages to pack a whole lot into its 135-minute running time. Damon (who filmed this just before GOOD WILL HUNTING was released) plays Rudy as a moral and decent man--one who knows all the jokes about lawyers, and wants to clear his profession's good name--and one who's a bit unsure, like he knows he's playing with the big boys now and isn't certain he belongs. Rudy goes to work for a shady law firm (one whose principal partner is under indictment on racketeering charges), where he teams up with DeVito (in perhaps the movie's most enjoyable performance) as Deck Shifflet, a slick-talking shyster who never passed the bar exam (after six tries), but doesn't let that stand in the way of his ambulance-chasing. After getting to know and admire Deck (who certainly isn't lacking in nerve or street smarts), Rudy (and Deck) eventually opens his own office to pursue his case against the insurance company. It helps the movie that Damon has a strong villain to compete with, and that's Voight (in an enjoyably hammy turn) as a slick Memphis attorney defending the insurance company--a guy who swims with sharks and probably likes it. THE RAINMAKER is nothing more than a slick old-fashioned courtroom drama in the mode of ANATOMY OF A MURDER with a strong cast of veteran actors and an underdog you'd be crazy not to root for, but there certainly isn't anything wrong with that. Also with Dean Stockwell, Mary Kay Place, Danny Glover, Roy Scheider, Virginia Madsen, Red West and Mickey Roarke. Music by Elmer Bernstein. Filmed mostly on location in Memphis.

RAMBO (2008)—Directed by Sylvester Stallone.  Stars Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz, Paul Schulze, Ken Howard.  Can you really go home again? John J. Rambo does so figuratively and literally in this incredibly bloody movie. RAMBO, the fourth in a series that began with the terrific FIRST BLOOD (1982), but has been absent from screens since 1988's RAMBO III, has the simplest screenplay of any of them, and times out at a lean 80 minutes or so (plus closing crawl). In a nutshell, Rambo (writer/director/star Stallone, as if you didn't know), now a lonesome cobra wrangler in Thailand, is approached by American missionaries to take them into war-torn Burma on his boat. He does, against his better judgment, and when the missionaries are eventually kidnapped by some real bastards, Rambo only slightly less reluctantly agrees to accompany some mercenaries into the jungle on a rescue mission.

RAMBO is one of the goriest R-rated films ever released, making SAVING PRIVATE RYAN look like SGT. BILKO. Frankly, I can't figure the MPAA ratings board. If the splatter on display here isn't graphic enough for an NC-17, then I can't imagine what is. Unfortunately, Nu Image, the production company that made its name shooting dozens of direct-to-video action and horror flicks in Bulgaria, cheaped out on the gore effects. Instead of using squibs and makeup, Nu Image hired the same Bulgarians who did CROCODILE 2 and SHARK ATTACK 3 to perform the CGI decapitations and limb removals. When will Hollywood learn that computer graphics will never be an improvement over physical effects? Perhaps the action was moving so fast, Stallone and Nu Image thought nobody would notice. It appears the MPAA didn't.

To be honest, I thought the violence in RAMBO was too brutal, for the most part. It's a simplistic action flick, nothing more, and while it succeeds at making the villains so damn hateful that you cheer when Rambo shows up to waste them, the opening violence was so realistic that it ceased to be "fun," if you know what I mean. It's curious how these movies have become politicized over the years, particularly during the 1980s, when President Reagan proclaimed that Rambo must have been a Republican. The irony is that the character is an expatriate with little love for the country that let him down after the Vietnam War and literally left him to die in the Vietnamese jungle years later. If anybody "hates America," it's John Rambo.

Still, Stallone is a talented action director, and it would be interesting to see what he could do with a film that he wasn't acting in. He unquestionably stages more dynamic action sequences than, say, Christopher Nolan and Doug Liman, not that anyone is going to be brave enough to give Sly a Batman movie to direct. Outside of Stallone, no other cast member or character really has much to do. The lead antagonist doesn't even have a name, as far as I could tell, and the film's most familiar supporting actor, Ken Howard (THE WHITE SHADOW), appears in just one scene. Of course, the movie is called RAMBO after all, so perhaps it can be forgiven.

RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II (1985)--Directed by George P. Cosmatos. Stars Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Charles Napier, Julia Nickson, Martin Kove, Steven Berkoff. Sly returns as angst-ridden Vietnam vet John Rambo, who uses his Green Beret skills to return to the jungle and rescue American POWs long forgotten by the U.S. government. Box-office blockbuster is certainly silly and cartoon-like, but you can't deny that it works. The action is fast-paced and exciting, and despite the fact that Rambo kills at least a hundred people, you still get the sense that he's the underdog. Crenna and Napier are sturdy in supporting roles. The beautiful Nickson meets the usual fate of the action hero's love interest. James Cameron (TITANIC) wrote the screenplay with Stallone. From the director of TOMBSTONE. Filmed in Mexico. Stallone was probably the biggest movie star in the world at this time. Music by Jerry Goldsmith.

RAMBO III (1988)--Directed by Peter MacDonald.  Stars Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Marc de Jonge, Kurtwood Smith.  The second sequel to FIRST BLOOD is less cartoony than RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II, yet even sillier, if that's possible.  John Rambo's mentor, Colonel Trautman (Crenna), is captured and held hostage by Soviet forces in Afghanistan.  Rambo (Stallone), who has joined a monastery in Thailand (!), is recuited (unofficially, of course) by the American government to join up with the Afghan rebels, rescue Trautman, and kill some Commies.  Of course, what's most noteworthy about this film today is that Rambo's allies are the Taliban, not exactly on the best of terms with the United States these days.  The explosions are bigger, the wounds are bloodier, and the scope is more epic, thanks to director MacDonald's sure hand with massive action scenes (he was a second-unit director on RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II).  It's actually cool to see Crenna getting in on the action for once, and he and Stallone have pretty decent chemistry together, even though Rambo demonstrates a sense of humor that seems out of character.  Filmed in Israel, Thailand and Arizona.  This was one of the most expensive movies ever made (at the time).  Music by Jerry Goldsmith.  Sly also scripted with Sheldon Lettich.

RANGERS (2000)--Directed by Jim Wynorski (as Jay Andrews). Stars Matt McCoy, Glenn Plummer. Wynorski, who can be good for four or five direct-to-video features a year, sure can crank 'em out in a hurry. One reason is that they're done cheaply by pilfering stock footage from more expensive films. Nearly every explosion, battle scene, chase and shootout in RANGERS has been taken from somewhere else and spliced into Wynorski's newly shot footage; indeed, most of the fun of RANGERS is trying to identify from which (better) film each shot was taken.

McCoy plays Captain Broughton, leader of a squad of Special Operations commandos who are assigned to parachute (using stock footage from NAVY SEALS) into an unnamed Middle Eastern country and kidnap a terrorist. They do, but the squad is double-crossed from within, and one of Broughton's men, his friend Shannon (Plummer), is captured. Shannon also learns his squad was betrayed from within, but suspects Broughton, so he agrees to work with the captured terrorist's brother to return to the United States on a rescue mission that will also serve as revenge for Shannon.

Or something like that. To be honest, the screenplay by Steve Latshaw doesn't make a lot of sense, nor should it be expected to, considering how it was structured. Wynorski and Latshaw picked out their action setpieces first from the available stock footage, then wove their story around them. The plot machinations Latshaw comes up with in order to get his characters where they need to be to fit into the previously filmed scenes are pretty amazing. The climax is set in Atlanta, only so huge chunks of the Chuck Norris flick INVASION U.S.A. can be used. A bus chase and crash from the Arnold Schwarzenegger thriller RED HEAT is recycled (it was also used in the Jeff Speakman DTV RUNNING RED), and look also for scenes from THE DELTA FORCE and THE HIDDEN. The new scenes are of the "place-the-actor-against-a-wall-and-film-it" variety, although you can see the cardboard folds in a "brick" wall used at one point. A nearly empty office building represents the Pentagon, and one scene set on a beach is accomplished by shooting the actors away from the water and against a blue plastic tarpaulin. The miniature effects and continuity errors are laughable, and co-star Corbin Bernsen appears to have filmed all of his scenes on the same day (actually, Wynorski reveals on the DVD's commentary that they were done in just three hours and that Bernsen was paid $30,000!).

Also with Dartanyan Edmonds as the odious "comic relief" who says, "That was easier than the 20-dollar ho' I had in Vegas", Melissa Brasselle, Bean Miller, Ryan Cutrona and Michael Mantell. McCoy later became a regular on the short-lived CITIZEN BAINES TV series. Wynorski has also directed under the pseudonyms Noble Henry and Arch Stanton. Released by Phoenician Entertainment.