Rambo

Stallone requires us to shut down the logical, sensible side of our minds that tells us that violence is wrong. Instead, he massages the primal side of the brain; the illogical, gruesome part of us that says it’s thrilling to watch a rapist sliced in half by a machete if he’s got it coming. Stallone milks the hubris a man can feel behind the barrel of a large-caliber machine gun, both the danger and the power that it can impose. Stallone has his cake and eats it, too, condemning violence while entertaining us with a body count ten times higher than Apocalypto. It is, in the strictest sense, catharsis -- release through drama. But when you’re walking out of the theater wondering what it was all about, your face might be as blank as Stallone's at the end. As if he’s waiting for all the non-violent Christian missionaries to say, “Thank you, John Rambo, for saving us from these evil Burmese dudes.” But no thanks ever come, as the Christians are too busy picking exploded people’s body parts out of their hair.