There Will Be Fourth Blood

"I'm coming to get yo!"

Sylvester Stallone's John Rambo purred into a handset before the blood-soaked and brass-scored climax of what has, alas, turned out not to be the final outing for his "Rambo" film franchise. And it will be a stealth attack. Executives at Lionsgate Films, who have titled the film — or brand-identified it — simply "Rambo" (though working titles included "Rambo IV: In the Serpent's Eye," "Rambo IV: Pearl of the Cobra," and, in a hopefully unintentional bid to evoke the similarly named combat memoirs of real-life war hero-turned-B-movie star Audie Murphy, "Rambo: To Hell and Back"), have shied away from advance screenings of the film prior to its nationwide release today.

Nevertheless, John Rambo is back, and apparently this time it's personal-er. It seems that in the 20 years since he dispatched scores of Russian soldiers in Afghanistan, and, in a move somehow even more preposterous than downing a Soviet Hind helicopter with a bow and arrow, Rambo has sworn off all forms of violence and taken up residence in Northern Thailand. But when a group of aid workers led by Sara and Michael Burnett (Julie Benz and Paul Schulze) go missing in nearby Burma, Rambo is forced to once again take up the grenade launcher on behalf of justice. Actor Richard Crenna, who portrayed Rambo's Green Beret Jiminy Cricket, Colonel Trautman, in each of the previous films, passed away in 2003, so Ken Howard (of "The White Shadow" fame) is on hand as Rambo's spiritual guide, Pastor Marsh. Rumors that Rambo crosses chopsticks with jungle gourmet Anthony Bourdain en route to a bloody showdown with the Burmese army remain unconfirmed.

Earlier this week in the Los Angeles Times, homeland security issues scholar and pundit John Mueller showed that his connections in the movie business apparently run as deep as his influence in anti-terrorism when he pre-screened the film and its three predecessors — 1982's "First Blood," 1985's "Rambo: First Blood Part II," and 1988's "Rambo III." Mr. Mueller's statistical analysis unveiled that the new "Rambo" (the first in the series to be written and directed by Mr. Stallone) contains 83 instances in which John Rambo kills someone, vs. 78 in the third installment, 58 in the second, and a single one in the first. When the 40 kills ascribed to Rambo's accomplices and 113 deaths at the hands of the movie's bad guys were factored in, Mr. Mueller calculated that the new millennium's "Rambo" contained 2.59 people killed a minute vs. 1.30, .72, and .01, respectively, going back to 1982.

This puzzling ratio makes perfect sense if one revisits the first film. Directed with journeyman skill by the Canadian Ted Kotcheff, "First Blood," in which Mr. Stallone's traumatized Vietnam veteran rebalances the scales of justice by decimating a rural police department and a National Guard unit, was a well-crafted action film that was somewhat darker toned visually and thematically than most early-'80s shoot-em-ups. In an effort to make Rambo more "sympathetic" than he apparently was portrayed in David Morrell's source novel, Mr. Stallone and the film's creative brain trust chose to depict the Green Beret commando consciously and conscientiously by having him merely wound his pursuers, rather than kill them. Were Mr. Mueller to recalibrate his scale to tally maiming, the first "Rambo" film's parade of leg wounds, broken bones, and non-fatal gorings would likely push its score into double digits.

Each successive "Rambo" film has moved further away from the first outing's novelistic nuance and recast Mr. Stallone's character as a one-dimensional superman (not unlike his character of Rocky, which made its return to screens last year after a 16-year absence). Should audiences respond positively to this latest film, in all likelihood Part 5 will pit John Rambo against the Alien-Predator duo. While the critical temptation to look upon a popular culture phenomenon such as the sudden return of the "Rambo" franchise after 20 years as a garish Rorschach blot indicating just how sick and desperate our war-obsessed society has become, the fact that John Rambo is once again "coming to get yo" has less to do with American filmgoers' tastes than American film producers' shamelessness. The only desperation in evidence is that of a certain writer-director-star gambling that as far as popcorn fodder goes, the '80s revival is still in full swing.