With droopy eyes and a lazy drawl, he was a far cry from the conventional classic looking men Hollywood dished out by the dozen.
But as the boxing underdog Rocky Balboa in Rocky and a war veteran-turned-mercenary John Rambo in Rambo, Sylvester Stallone broke not only the norms of the industry, but also box-office records.
His real life rags-to-riches story, of determination and standing by his convictions in the face of adversity made him an instant hero, both on screen and off it. His well-toned physique and rippling muscles have been an inspiration for many and with a fan base spawning across generations, the Hollywood hunk is still a force to reckon with. And at 60-plus, as he reprises his role as John Rambo in the fourth installment of the Rambo series, Sly proves that for this action hero, it’s age no bar!
John Rambo is extremely easy to figure out. He’s not a complex guy. What is right is right and what is wrong is wrong for him. Bad should be punished and the weak should be protected,
he says of one of his favourite on screen characters that he’ll be seen playing.
However, not content with acting alone, Stallone has donned the mantle of the director for John Rambo. He says, “I really didn’t intend to direct, but after going through the entire Rocky Balboa experience, I realized that if this is going to be the last vehicle of this character, then I’d like to be involved in every aspect, because usually, when someone else does it, you have regrets. And I thought it would be interesting to have Rambo direct Rambo. Also I’d like to take the responsibility because if something does go wrong, I will have no regrets. I will say that well, I did the best I could and it's no one’s fault but mine. And if it works, then I’ll just take all the credit.”
Talking about his latest baby, Stallone confesses that shooting for it was ‘a gloriously brutal experience’. “It was harder than anything I’ve ever done before, but also more rewarding. We literally had to go through the jungle and be torn apart by nature, insects and snakes,” he laughs.
Action has always been the highlight of the bow-and-arrow wielding Rambo and this one’s no different. “The action in the film is what you can call blood and guts hand-made films,” he says. Stallone reveals that though today everything is more technical, he prefers to keep Rambo as basic, and as primitive and as real as it can get.
Admitting that he belongs to the old school of film making, he adds, “It’s kind of buying old furniture that’s really antique and well-made, the kinds they don’t do it anymore. I was talking to Arnold Schwarzenegger and saying that we’re kind of relics, like dinosaurs. What we used to do was use arm stuff.”
Hinting that it might be the last Rambo, the Hollywood star says, “I thought if I do the last Rambo, I wanted it to be about something. I didn’t want it to be about a cape or drugs or jewel heist. I really wanted it to be about humanity and asked around, called up magazines, the UNO and asked what is the most unreported, most graphic and devastating abusive human rights on the planet and they said Burma.”
Elaborating on the movie, Stallone adds, “The scope of the film is very big, because these are very small people in a vast hostile wasteland. And as Rambo says that really people are just savage when left on their own. And we see the savage world that he’s going to descend into. But in this journey into darkness there’s a sense of hope and spectacle. And when I say spectacle, I mean spectacle, when a man can rise above the sense of despair. And by saving her and the missionaries, Rambo’s also saving a part of himself.”
And is there a mantra that Sylvester Stallone believes in? Live for nothing or die for something,
he says.
Julie Benz at the premiere of Rambo IV
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