the movies By DAN KEETON ¢ American hero stands like a colossus, machine gun ft blazing, while all around him, the soldiers fall. Standing for Americanism at home and abroad, he sports an intimidating array of lethal weaponry. When that’s all used up, or taken from him, he gets down to the basics and dispatches his usually non-white enemies with _ the sheer force of his oversized pectorals and biceps. - Topped with a countenance the consistency of granite, our hero is not so much human as he is fighting machine. Virtually undefeatable and displaying little sign of self- _ doubt or other unmanly sensitivities, he’s trotted before _ today’s youth — and the not-so-young — as the ideal Tole model. But in the opinion of many, he’s laughable. - And to others, the modern day version of John Wayne is outrageous, a manifestation of a myth not seen, or at least heavily promoted, since the Cold War days of the Fifties. But then, for his creators, resurrecting the Cold War is what it’s all about. _____ North American audiences, and increasingly, the pub- lic in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere, are being treated to a steady diet of American supermen during the last few years. The latter-day GI Joe has peaked, in the opinion of many, with the advent of Rambo, the character and film which paraded across movie screens this past summer and fall reaping for its makers record profits. _John Rambo, the traumatized Vietnam veteran brought > life by superstar Sylvester Stallone, was not the first attempt by U.S. filmmakers to win on the screen what was lost in the actual jungles of Southeast Asia. Chuck Norris, the blond blue-eyed master of martial arts who started out dismembering baddies of no particular political stripe years back, was put to partisan use in two recent _ productions, Missing In Action parts I and II. case the public thinks the threat to Americanism lies ily in foreign fields, the movie moguls have assured them at the home front is also subject to attack. A year anda ago Red Dawn spun a tale of a United States con- d by a pre-emptive Soviet nuclear strike, coupled h an invasion in the old-fashioned mode, while more ly, Chuck Norris has again flexed his muscles in Geta of idine abd hearthside in’ Invadon USA: one isn’t impressed by militarism — and millions of ericans and Canadians are not — there are cinematic ttles of a different sort. Just in time for Christmas comes IV, the latest in the seemingly endless series of dog-becomes-boxing-champion films. Unlike it decessors, the fourth “Italian Stallion” opus has the cular Stallone represent America in a grudge match h a Soviet opponent. With the stage set for outright anti-Sovietism by Red and furthered by Rocky IV, it makes sense from the ing ideologues’ point of view to capture the hearts inde of those unimpressed by macho on the battle- d or in the ring. White Nights, starring ex-Soviet ballet Mikhail Baryshnikov and American tapper Gregory , reminds its more genteel audience that the dancers not soldiers, not heroes” — just a couple of dancers g artistic freedom from a ruthless and bureaucratic ‘Somewhat ironically, it is the last film that has drawn the serious criticism from North American critics to date. sme reviewers tend to laugh in print at the far-fetched of Rambo and his ilk. Yet behind the ridiculous of unreal-heroics is just as determined an effort to first militarism, and second, hostility, in the s of the western world’s citizens. : > popularity of Rambo, which grossed unprecedented millions in box-office receipts, can be attributed to the TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 18, 1985 UNBUTTONED CHUCK NORRIS repels Russians and other invaders in recent Cold War film, Invasion USA. In the latest epic, the full title of which is Rambo: First Blood, Part II, Stallone reprises the glum Vietnam veteran who took on the hypocritical forces of law and order in First Blood (laying waste to Hope, B.C., in the process). Discounting the mayhem he creates in a quest for righting wrongs, Rambo is a sympathetic figure capitalizing on the anger many real-life Viet vets have felt over, their neglect by the U.S. government. In the opening scenes he’s devastated to find that an old war buddy he’d travelled miles to visit has died of cancer due to exposure to the chemical defol- iant, Agent Orange. ~ Subsequently misused and abused by the town sheriff, Rambo goes on a rampage that only ends when he’s calmed down by his former commander, a colonel in the Green Berets. Surprisingly, considering the exploding trucks and buildings and ammunition exchanged on the way to the film’s climax, only one person, a sheriff's deputy, is killed (and frankly folks, he was asking for it.) But after all, in First Blood our hero is dealing with white Americans. In Rambo, the opposition doesn’t get off so lightly. When the guys on the business end of one’s Uziare Asians, with a few Soviet advisors thrown in for good measure, open season can be declared with interest. Racial antagonisms aren’t the only thing exploited by Rambo’s makers. In-an attempt to put flesh and bone to a favorite myth touted'by U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s administration, the film has Rambo sent to Vietnam to find all those prisoners of war that must be languishing in Vietnamese tiger cages. Of course he finds them, and of course Rambo is betrayed by the American officials who sent him. That latter theme, used repeatedly in violent right-wing films, always involves a lone individual — or small groups of individuals — pitted against not only a ruthless adver- — sary, but also hindered by liberalish, lily-livered bureau- crats. As such, it’s the essence of Reaganism, which sees the current administration as a kind of supercop, alone in enforcing “justice” internationally. Concurrently on the home front, it’s dismantling all welfare giveaway schemes _ and civil rights legislation that previous administrations, lacking the true grit, passed when they knuckled under to the un-American demands of a leftish minority. Lily-liveredness of a sort figures into the first Missing in Action film. While U.S. government officials dicker with their Vietnamese counterparts over the fate of “MIAs” — missing-in-action American soldiers — protagonist Chuck Norris (as retired Col. Braddock of the Green Berets) heads into the jungles to rescue them. He does, after several scenes of knifings, garrotings, shootings and explosions which prematurely end the existence of scores of unattrac- tively presented Vietnamese soldiers and officials. The only Asians spared Norris’ hand are some former U.S. allies also incarcerated in the remote prison camp. LE case we didn’t get the message, Missing in Action 2 — an extremely poorly made sequel, even more racist, with its sneering and cruel prison wardens, than the first — film — makes sure we don’t. The opening scenes show actual footage of Reagan addressing a crowd, which includes families of MIAs, at the Arlington Cemetary. Ina speech long on rhetoric but short on substantiation — the kind that has become his trademark — Reagan intones: “An end to America’s involvement in Vietnam cannot come.until we achieve a full accounting of those missing in action... They (MIAs’ families) wonder why the world sits back and allows the Vietnamese government to flagrantly violate the Geneva convention.” The “world” probably sits back because its knows that — Vietnam, bombed and defoliated by more than a decade of warfare inflicted on it by the U.S., has better things to do - with its resources than maintain prisoners of war at public expense, 10 years after the withdrawal of American troops. . But then, the utterings of the president and the films that — carry his message have little to do with logic, or historical — reality. At one point in Missing In Action 2 the commander of the prison camp asks a European collaborator how their mutual heroin trade is doing. Anyone who knows anything about recent events. is aware that it was the puppet regime in the south portion of partitioned Vietnam that profited — along withsome U.S. - partners — greatly in the herhoin trade. Making a pitch to those die-hards who desperately want a different outcome to the war in Vietnam, to satiate an American public disheartened by mass unemployment at home and a loss of see YOUTH page 22