Stars: Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz, Matthew Marsden, Bruce Willis, Monica Bellucci, Cole Hauser, Ewan McGregor, Josh Hartnett, Tom Sizemore

Director: Ridley Scott

Summary: Triplebill of action films. Includes RAMBO, TEARS OF THE SUN and BLACK HAWK DOWN.

Triplebill of action films. Includes RAMBO, TEARS OF THE SUN and BLACK HAWK DOWN.
Rambo sees John Rambo living like a hermit and wrangling rattlesnakes in Thailand. He is drawn back into the action by a group of missionaries who want the Vietnam vet to ferry them upriver into Burma. But when the group of idealists gets captured by the Burmese army, it's up to Rambo and a team of multinational mercenaries to save the day.
In TEARS OF THE SUN, a Navy SEAL officer is sent to rescue a doctor from war torn Nigeria. But the doctor refuses to abandon the refugees in her care and she implores the officer to escort them to the Cameroon border.
Based on true events, BLACK HAWK DOWN is an account of an American UN Peacekeeping Force which landed in Mogadishu, Somalia in October 1993. Their mission was to abduct the two top lieutenants of a local warlord but the team are quickly surrounded by enemy forces and a fifteen hour fierce ground battle ensues.

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Rambo
If you've been wondering what ever happened to ex–Green Beret super warrior John Rambo since he singlehandedly shot up a Pacific Northwest town (First Blood, 1982), returned to the jungles of 'Nam to free U.S. POWs held long after war's end (Rambo: First Blood Part II, 1985), and interrupted the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan long enough to blow lots of stuff up and rescue his old commandant from the Reds (Rambo III, 1988), then Rambo (2008) is for you. Without so much as a IV to dilute the brand name, Rambo--which is what most of us called the second, most iconic film in the series--may aspire to open a new era for a pop legend. But it's a thoroughly mechanical attempt to re-animate a franchise that, absent the anger, frustration, and self-loathing of the post-Vietnam years, has no meaning or purpose. For some time now Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) has been putt-putting along the Thai-Burmese border in a longboat, catching exotic snakes to sell. As for the 60-year civil war in Burma between the brutal government and the Karen independence movement, he ignores it. Enter a party of American missionaries whose dewy blond spokeswoman (Dexter's Julie Benz) asks Rambo to haul them upriver so that they can bring medical aid to the insurgents. After the requisite number of monosyllabic refusals, he does. Soon afterward the do-gooders are in a world of hurt, and he's summoned to lead a squad of mercenaries on a rescue mission.

As storytelling, the latest Rambo is the most bare-bones of the bunch. Rambo has little to say, so it's especially galling that Stallone, as director and co-writer, obliges him to have essentially the same conversation at three different points (the final distillation: "Live for nothing or die for something"). The Burmese army goons seem in competition to commit the most hideous atrocity (e.g., child skull-crushing underfoot), the better to justify the eventual, lovingly protracted spectacle of them being eviscerated by high-powered weaponry. Although shot in Thailand, the movie has mostly been photographed in brown, reducing any particular sense of place but, perhaps, perversely increasing our gratitude for the splashes of purple whenever hot metal tatters flesh. --Richard T. Jameson

Tears of the Sun
While it offers nothing new to the military action genre, Tears of the Sun distinguishes itself with fine acting, expert craftsmanship, and seriousness of purpose. Its familiar "extraction mission" plot is essentially similar to that of Black Hawk Down, involving a crack team of U.S. Special Ops commandos struggling to rescue innocent missionaries amidst the bloody horror of Nigerian ethnic cleansing. With Bruce Willis as their grizzled, no-nonsense commander, the skillful team enters a hot zone that gets even hotter when their "package"--an American national (Monica Bellucci) who runs the isolated mission--demands that 70 Nigerian villagers be included in the rescue. Willis's uneasy conscience leads him to defy orders and expand his mission, and in an ambitious follow up to Training Day, director Antoine Fuqua escalates tension and strike-force with considerable emotional impact. Originally considered as a potential entry in Willis's Die Hard series, and released on the eve of America's war with Iraq, Tears of the Sun admirably avoids jingoism with its rousing story of personal good vs. political evil. --Jeff Shannon

Black Hawk Down
Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down conveys the raw, chaotic urgency of ground-force battle in a worst-case scenario. With exacting detail, the film re-creates the American siege of the Somalian city of Mogadishu in October 1993, when a 45-minute mission turned into a 16-hour ordeal of bloody urban warfare. Helicopter-borne U.S. Rangers were assigned to capture key lieutenants of Somali warlord Muhammad Farrah Aidid, but when two Black Hawk choppers were felled by rocket-propelled grenades, the U.S. soldiers were forced to fend for themselves in the battle-torn streets of Mogadishu, attacked from all sides by armed Aidid supporters. Based on author Mark Bowden's bestselling account of the battle, Scott's riveting, action-packed film follows a sharp ensemble cast in some of the most authentic battle sequences ever filmed. The loss of 18 soldiers turned American opinion against further involvement in Somalia, but Black Hawk Down makes it clear that the men involved were undeniably heroic. --Jeff Shannon

Aspect Ratio:	16:9 Anamorphic Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region B
Special Features:	Audio commentary with Sylvester Stallone , It's a Long Road: Resurrection of an Icon featurette, Courage and Inspiration: The Musical Legacy of Jerry Goldsmith featurette, Preparing a Warrior featurette, The Art of War: Completing RAMBO featurette, Legacy of D
Subtitles:	Greek, Dutch, Hindi, Czech, French, Hungarian, English, Arabic, Turkish, Polish
Release Date:	October 27, 2008
Runtime:	356 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	S B R P 9425
Keywords:	Black, Sun, Action, Hawk, English, Tears, General, Down, Rambo, Adventure
Genre:	Action/Adventure