Why Rambo's not right.

WHO ARE You?" the evil Russian colonel shouts into a gunship's radio. "Your worst nightmare," barks John Rambo into a walkie-talkie he's just captured from the Soviet commandoes.

That was my second-favorite line. Earlier the Russian asks his prisoner, a friend of Rambo's: "Who do you think this man is? God?" "God would show you mercy," goes the reply. "He won't." I now believe that Mr. Sylvester Stallone is indeed himself the author of the screenplay for Rambo III.

Rambo is in Afghanistan to rescue the friend, his old colonel. This provides the excuse for a predictable succession of brilliant special effects. The awesome power of the Mi-24 helicopter gunship is particularly well portrayed. I can confirm that when an Mi-24 suspends itself above a village, the earth, and one's own body, really shakes from the blast of the rotors. And, with its 120 rockets, the machine really can destroy everything in its path. However, the rockets do not produce huge splashes of fire across which a dauntless hero may ride on a steed. They burst less spectacularly, but the shrapnel would surely have killed Rambo many times over. There are other hitches.

Russians do not wear Siberian hats or jungle camouflage clothing in the desert. The standard-issue rifle in the Soviet army is the new AK-74 kalakov, easily recognizable by its cylindrical steel tip at the end of the barrel, not the AK-47 kalashnikov, which is the Afghan army's and the guerrillas' basic weapon. No Afghan would shoot at the gunships with his kalashnikov. The kalashnikov bullet cannot penetrate the helicopter's armor. A wellorganized unit would always keep a few rocket-propelled grenades; at a distance of up to three hundred meters, a steadily held RPG can bring down a gunship.

Inshallah does not mean "Good luck," and is not used as a greeting or parting. Khoda Hafez-"God protect" -is customary on such occasions. Inshallah means "God willing": inshallab, we shall get horses in the next village, would be correct. (There's an old donkey.) On a $65-million budget the research should have been better.

The pictures of the Russians are wrong: hardened cuttbroats, or scoundrels foaming at the mouth, to a man reveling in crude torture. Perhaps it's too much to expect the film to hint at the tragedy of many of the soldiersperhaps the majority-being teenage Soviet conscripts who found themselves reluctantly killing and being killed in a war they did not understand. The picture of the Afghans is worse: tough but savage halfwits. They play buzkachi-the Afghan polo-only to allow the gunships to decimate them effortlessly. In the final scene, the Afghans charge on horseback against Soviet tanks, armored personnel carriers, and helicopters. Only Rambo saves the day, capturing a tank and destroying the gunship, impaling it on the tank's barrel.

On the point of fact: I myself rode with a cavalry unit in Afghanistan for several weeks. This was not because we wanted to look romantic in the saddle, but because using horses for transport made excellent sense in the rough, mountain terrain. Carrying two Stingers for protection from the air, we moved across valleys and passes unimpeded by the Soviets. But nobody would have been stupid enough to expose precious horses to the machinegun fire in a cavalry charge.

What would one do if one wanted to disguise one's blatant use of a current tragedy for commercial purposes? One would dedicate the enterprise to the very people whose suffering one is exploiting. Rambo III is duly devoted to the gallant Afghan nation. We are not told whether the profits from it will be donated to, say, buying the Afghans the artificial limbs Rambo surveys with such compassion in a shop in Peshawar. Hence, I can't help asking whether the film renders a favor or a disservice to the Afghans.

It tacitly affirms the false notion that the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan is largely due to pressure from the West. The fact of the matter is that when the Afghans began their war nobody thought they would last more than a few months. The American aid may have tipped the military balance in their favor, but the main weight on the scale against the Soviet might was the astonishing resistance of the Afghans themselves. The Soviet Union has finally understood the language of kalashnikovs and Stingers, but it was the Afghans who did the fighting and the dying.

I'VE LONG WONDERED why the Afghan war never attracted the sort of enthusiasm that the Spanish Civil War did in the 1930s. Charity appeals for the refugees brought in pitiful sums. Rambo III sanctions the impression that the Afghan cause was one shared only by subscribers to Soldier of Fortune.

When Rambo disinfects a wound by burning gunpower inside his muscles, the audience in my cinema burst into laughter. The film was being taken for what it is, a moving comic-book. As that, it is hugely enjoyable. But a war in which more than a million people were killed by a country that wants to appear civilized surely deserves a more thoughtful film. Channeled to the best fighters inside Afghanistan, the millions spent on makingthis film could almost win the war. Instead it will do harm by endorsing the sillier stereotypes about the fighters.