Rambo 5: Rambo vs. Sex Traffickers

by Amanda Kloer · 2009-09-01 07:14:00 UTC
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Rambo -- America's most loved, most parodied, and most clichéd action hero -- is prepping for his fifth big screen adventure.  And this time, he's kicking some serious sex trafficker ass.  Will the film ultimately hurt or help the anti-trafficking cause?

Sylvester Stallone returns as the title role in Rambo 5, this time to find and save a young girl kidnapped on the U.S.-Mexican border.  In the process, he fights his way through hoards of sex traffickers and drug lords, one assumes by employing the usual tactful etiquette and diplomacy the Rambo series has come to embody.   Production for the new Rambo, not yet given a working title, will begin in the Spring of 2010.  Rumors predict it will be set and filmed in the character's hometown in Arizona.  Common sense predicts people will get shot and big things will blow up.

The number of films that revolve around human trafficking is increasing as the issue gets more and more media attention.  In the beginning, trafficking films were mostly small-budget, indy productions like Trade and Holly, both of which I've recommended.  However, big studios are finally starting to realize that human trafficking, or more specifically sex trafficking, involves most of the elements that make a good action movie -- gobs of violence, really evil villains, hot young women in peril, macho law-enforcement-type heroes, and of course, sex.  But just because the studios understand the elements of trafficking doesn't not mean they understand trafficking.  Taken (the film where Liam Neeson is an ex-CIA agent whose rich, white, well-connected daughter is kidnapped in Paris) is the perfect example of how a major film company can completely fail to see how human trafficking really works.  Real life spoiler alert: Traffickers prey on vulnerable people, not the educated and resourced daughters of American intell professionals.  So will Rambo 5 be true to the issue?  Or will it take the Taken route and focus explosion height than on actual substance?

I'd love to be wrong, but my money is on the machine gun fire being the most accurate and educating part of Rambo 5.  Still, at the end of the film the score is sure to be Rambo: 1, Sex Traffickers, 0.  And I'll probably shell out the $9.50 just to see them loose.   

Photo credit: Nukeit1    

 

Amanda Kloer is a Change.org Editor and has been a full-time abolitionist in several capacities for seven years. Follow her on Twitter @endhumantraffic
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