Stealth, Rambo, and the Lady

After “Rambo,” the “Lady”—Hollywood Discovers Burma [Commentary]
By Yeni
January 25, 2008

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The fourth in a series of war veteran “Rambo” films, featuring Hollywood's mega-star Sylvester Stallone as a 61-year-old who heads into the Burmese jungle to rescue abducted Western missionaries, has its world premiere on Friday.

Many Burmese democracy activists believe this is a good time to release the film, four months after the September pro-democracy protests in Burma and the subsequent vicious military crackdown made international headlines.

Although the character of Rambo is essentially apolitical and not known as a subject of intellectual interest, many Burmese will watch the movie, which is expected to direct wide attention again to the Burma issue.

Burmese inside the country will be looking for clandestine copies of the film. Burmese youngsters are bound too enjoy the movie and will be emulating Rambo and his feats.

Several Hollywood celebrities have recently shown interest in the Burma crisis and helped increase awareness of the situation. Burma is now a hot Hollywood property, figuring for the second time in less than two years in action movies with Burmese settings. In the first, “Stealth”, a fictitious air raid is made on a terrorist cell in Rangoon.

Rambo deserves thanks for attracting world attention to Burma's current plight under the cruel oppression of the military junta. But while the film remains true to Hollywood tradition and has a happy ending, the reality in Burma has so such outcome.

Meanwhile, the leading US entertainment magazine, Variety, recently reported that the life of Burmese democracy icon and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi will be the subject of a new movie, titled “The Lady.”

Giuseppe Tornatore, director of the Oscar-winning Italian film “Nuovo cinema Paradiso,” plans to make “The Lady” with Japanese producer Naofumi Okamoto. Production is set to begin later this year.

According to the Variety report, “The Lady” will cover the period from Suu Kyi’s return to Burma in 1988, when she was 43, to the present day, and Okamoto is to produce the US $30 million project alongside Avi Arad, Steven Paul and Benedict Carver of Los Angeles-based Crystal Sky Pictures, which will finance the film.

Arad, best known for movies based on Marvel Comics superheroes such as Spider-Man and X-Men, told Variety: "At first I thought it wasn't my kind of movie, but then I realized it was. To me, Suu Kyi was like a character from 'X-Men,' except she's a real hero, not an imaginary one. She didn't need to do what she did, and she gave up a lot to do it."

Suu Kyi is, of course, a living heroine. That is why it will be interesting to see who will play her in the movie and how the Italian director and his film team will portray Burma's democracy icon and present her—and her beloved people's—struggle against the military dictatorship.

Arad told Variety that the movie is intended to reach the broadest possible audience. "It's a love story and a political thriller. If it's not commercially successful, we will have missed the mark."

Who knows? The film could rival the highly successful film on the life of Mahatma Gandhi, who led the nonviolent resistance movement against British colonial rule in India during the first half of the 20th century.