Hollywood has despatched Rambo to Burma to sort out the junta's armed forces in a movie that Burmese exiles hope will raise the morale of their disheartened countrymen. In To Hell and Back, the muscular Mr Fixit, played once again by Sylvester Stallone, embarks on a mission to the borderlands to rescue a party of Western aid workers captured and tortured by brutal Burmese troops.
In true Errol Flynn style, Stallone defeats what seems like a battalion of crack regime soldiers, who - apart from taking the Westerners hostage - have been creating havoc in Burma's ethnic Karen State, many of whose people are Christians.
The film is due for release on January 25, and already interest among Burma's exile community in neighbouring Thailand is so keen that orders are being placed with street hawkers for pirated copies. |
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Rambo is taking on the junta, and Burma’s exiles are agog, says edward loxton |
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The film is certain to be banned in Burma, sharing the fate of Stealth, a 2005 US production that featured an air attack on a summit gathering of al-Qaeda leaders in a Rangoon high-rise. But copies of banned films are easily smuggled into Burma, where they find eager buyers among moviegoers bored with the fare passed by the country's censors.
Stealth is said to have been cited by some of the ruling generals in support of the decision to move Burma's capital from Rangoon to Naypyidaw, a remote jungle fastness judged to be safe from outside attack. The release now of a second film depicting a successful military intervention in Burma may cause more sleepless nights for General Than Shwe and other members of his junta, according to Burmese opposition commentators.
A British author of two books on Burma, insisting on anonymity 
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