Big Issues on the Big Screen

Try to imagine what kind of person devotes a part of his or her life to relieving oppressed peoples on the far side of the planet ..... did Sylvester Stallone come to mind? He should.

"A week after 'Rambo' made a nearly #1 box office debut, movie star Sylvester Stallone says he wants to go to Burma to address human rights violations," Nathan Black wrote earlier this year, in this report for the Christian Today website. "The 61-year-old actor, who stars in, directed and co-wrote the movie, said he hopes the film provokes confrontation and said he is willing to travel to Burma to confront ruling military officials."

While the film received lukewarm reviews from critics, it was hailed by many who have first-hand knowledge of the atrocities going on in Burma ..... a situation that was desperate even before Cyclone Nargis slammed into the country earlier this month. Our mission team was in Thailand in February, just as the film was being released around the world, and many we spoke to looked forward to a chance to see it in the theaters.

Now, we all will have a chance to see it again as the film makes its way to DVD. Be advised, the film is rated R, due in large part to the graphic violence that is one of the hallmarks of the "Rambo" series.

In "Rambo," Vietnam War veteran John Rambo spends his retirement in northern Thailand where he's running a boating service. On the nearby Thai-Burma border, the Burmese-Karen conflict rages into its 60th year. A pastor enlists his help when Christian missionaries are kidnapped by Burmese soldiers in the Karen state.

The film has already proved to be a rallying point for many to decry the ruling junta. Today, Karen civilians are appealing to the world for assistance, warning that if the Burma Army is not stopped, they will soon cease to exist.

Much of the population of northern Karen State is displaced with thousands of civilians hiding close to their old villages and thousands more fleeing to the Thai-Burma border, according to Free Burma Rangers, a humanitarian aid organisation working in the conflict zones of eastern Burma. These include the people of Mae La Refugee Camp, that our Thailand Mission team visited in February.

Their plight touched Stallone deeply ..... and he himself got a sense of the threats the Karen and other oppressed peoples face in Burma. He said that he received multiple death threats while filming in Thailand for “Rambo.”

“I got them [death threats] all the time. It’s a very dangerous part of the world,” said the 61-year-old Hollywood action star while at the film’s UK premiere in London, according to The Guardian newspaper. “A lot of people just disappear. They just didn't want this film to be made, it’s an insidious civil war that has gone on for sixty years and no one knows about it because they've been keeping it quiet.”

Christian NewsWire reports that, "in the early stages of the script's development, Stallone consulted with Soldiers of Fortune magazine and asked one crucial question: where is the one place on earth where the worst atrocities are taking place and getting the least amount of attention? The answer was Burma."

He knows it, the oppressed peoples and the oppressed churches of Burma know it, the relief workers of southeast Asia know it ..... and now, thanks to this film, and to the ongoing coverage Burma in the wake of the deadly cyclone, we can all know it.