I was just watching this on Blu Ray, and the thought never occured to me before... why does he use a bow and arrow? Surely a silenced rifle would be more effective. Now it's true he was not sent in to fight, so that could be a reason but... why does he have explosive tipped arrows?
Moreover, does anyone know if explosive tipped arrows exist? lol I can't think of any valid reason for him to use a bow, except they say early on they say he is half Indian :) .
I think that they were just going for something different. That, and a bow is a bit more primal than a gun.
About the explosive arrows existing or not; I don't think so. They wouldn't be very practical; they would weigh the arrow down a lot and it wouldn't fly very far, at least not as far as they wanted you to believe in the film.
The "explosive" arrowheads in the film were actually just the plastic protective covers of a "broadhead" arrowhead, painted gold, and the tip snipped off to expose the tip of the broadhead blade.
"I expect nothing less than gratuitous violence from the lot of ya."
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I know the script came before the book, but David Morrell elaborates on Rambo's preference for the bow in his novelisation of FB Pt2. Well worth a read, quite easy and inexpensive to get hold of via ebay, abebooks etc.
shareAh I'll have to get my hands on a copy. Didn't realize Morell had anything to do with the sequel plot(since the book has Rambo killing himself). Thank you.
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He also wrote a novelization for Rambo III, but not Rambo.
I wonder if I can say *beep* here without it getting bleeped out. Guess not.
When he jumped out of the plane to start the mission, he got hung up and had to cut off all of his gear. Listen to the dialog and it explains everything! The only choice left for weapons were his knife and bow. It places him at a disadvantage that he must overcome. That's the whole point of the character; he has to use only the tools he has to beat the enemy. I'm sure if he ended up with his guns, he wouldn't purposely favor a knife over them.
shareYeah, because all those guys he had already killed didn't have guns that he could've picked up...
shareThat's true enough, but..I'd have to argue that 1)Bow/Arrow = light weight and stealthy..but, as mentioned above..something different. Everyone *else* uses guns. Have you seen all the Bond flicks..it's almost a game/challenge to invent new ways of killing off people..
sometimes you have to take the bull by the horns
Certainly they didn't have any silenced weapons. They're prison guards, they want their weapons to be noisy.
Death to shakeycam directors!
I'd say that was probably a Cameron thing. He's often told stories about people relying on technology and it failing them in the end. In a way this film is kind of the reverse of "Aliens" which he wrote around the same time. In "Aliens" you had Marines with state of the art equipment going into a dangerous situation against a more primitive enemy who they though they could easily handle. In this Rambo reluctantly agrees to go in with lots of heavy modern equipment which he is forced to discard but than fights and wins in a more primitive primal way.
sharethey state in the film that he is native american (assuming that when they say 'indian' they mean native american)
"german and indian decent"
perhaps he grew up shooting a bow? maybe he felt more comfortable using it than a rifle? possibly a way for the film makers to visualize his past culture and put him at a disadvantage against the enemy?
I think this is truly the first and only film about Rambo that made the biggest difference in terms of character development for its multi-faceted and symbolical texture, hence why this and not the 1st film made Rambo so symbolically and culturally iconic.
I like my coffee the same way I like my women...........strong......black......and proud.
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I think he is a big fan of Robin Hood. He just like him fights for justice.
Dawn of the Dead ´78 is the best movie ever.
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Rambo was famous with the Bow and Arrow because in the Vietnam war the commando/soldier (either army or marines)with the highest amount of recorded kills scored like 2000 kills or some insane amount. For 8 years while he was there and people say he only used silent weapons like Knifes. But he killed the most people with the Bow and Arrow and back in the 70's people associated a bow and arrow with massive death in Vietnam because of the stories.
But in reality, the bow and arrow is a vicious weapon and it really is as effective as they show it... but I don't think the distance is always perfect. Some of the shots Rambo gets would have had to been done by an arrow gun or something gas powered.
Um... If I'm not mistaken, which I may be, silenced guns make some amount of noise when shot due to the pressure of the bullet leaving the gun would be my guess. A bow and arrow would in theory be much quieter... Well in my theory, which may or may not be entirely correct, the bow and arrow would be much quieter.
Also I found a bunch of exploding arrow clips on youtube, all of which may be fake or staged I don't know. They aren't my clips... I'm just sayin.
Here's a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJx1GU2Ph84
Look at it from a tactical point of view, meaning why would he want to bring a bow and the explosive tips?
Well, a bow, as other's have mentioned, is silent. They added a lot of sound effects to it for the film, but in reality that kind of bow makes very very little noise.
Despite what some films would have you believe, a silenced or supressed rifle, is not silent by any means. Now, a .22 pistol with a well made silencer would be pretty quiet, but that isn't very Rambo now is it?
Arrows can get banged around, can get wet and still work. The bow can be broken down and carried in a bag as he does, which doesn't look to others like it obviously contain a weapon like a gun case would.
It's light and he's obviously proficient with it and the enemy wouldn't expect it.
The explosive tips, while they would make the arrow heavier, could still work. If you've ever used a compound bow set at 80 pounds and lobbed and arrow into the air, meaning arching it for distance, it can travel a couple hundred yards. If you gave it more weight and pushed it to 100 lbs (which Rambo can handle) and fired from an elevated position at vehicles or buildings, the explosive arrows could do some real damage.
It's an unconventional weapon, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have its advantages.
And as for the poster who asked why he didn't just pick up a gun from one of the guys he killed...the beginning of the film before he is captured is supposed to be a stealth mission. He wasn't even supposed to engage the enemy. The biggest weapon he even brought with him was an MP5 which was ditched with his gear. He didn't want to carry a gun, because he couldn't go loud anyway and he didn't need to. During the escape, the first thing he does it pick up a downed soldier's AK-47 and grenades.
Plus, it's damn cool and it hadn't been done before.
"When you're pushed, killing's as easy as breathing."
The problem with explosive arrows wouldn't be that they wouldn't work, it's that the amount of explosive you could put in them would be tiny. Those things in the movie were a fraction the size of a grenade. Enough to blow a small chunk out of a body the arrowhead lodged in, but not worth the decrease in accuracy and distance, the added expense and weight, etc.
Death to shakeycam directors!
Rambo did not have to cut his gear while he was hung up, it was just an opportunity for him to get rid of as much of that technological junk as possible. The scoped gun, the camera and all that, so he wasn't forced to cut it free and his mission did not get off to a bad start.
"That's just not true. He had to cut away his gear to get to the strap that was hanging him up on the plane. Always thought that was pretty obvious."
That may have been the intent of the scene, but it's ridiculous. It's not as if his equipment was forming a force field around the strap that was hanging him up. All he had to do was reach down underneath his equipment and cut the strap.
"Also...to address the poster who said not enough explosive could fit in that arrowhead....they're about an inch wide at the base...you could fit an ounce of SEMTEX in the cone with a plunger detonator as the tip."
An ounce? Yeah, right. A cone with a base diameter of 1 inch and a height of, say, 2 inches, has a volume of 0.52 cubic inches. SEMTEX has a density of 1.44 g/cm3, so you could fit ~0.4 ounces of it in there (and that's only if you leave no room for a detonator). That's equivalent to about half an ounce of TNT, which produces ~59 kilojoules of energy. A single stick of dynamite produces 1 megajoule of energy, which is about 17 times more energy than the hypothetical SEMTEX-filled arrowhead. That's about the same amount of energy as 118 firecrackers (the U.S. legal limit for firecrackers is 50 mg of flash powder, which = ~500 joules of energy).
"It could easily blow up a vehicle...and comparing the explosion of the dude that gets hit with one of the explosive arrows and the explosions on the bridge...the fuel in the trucks is supposed to have more to do with the exaggerated fireballs. When the dude explodes, that's the arrowhead alone."
So you think that 1/17th of a stick of dynamite, or 118 firecrackers, could blow up a vehicle, or blow up a human into ~nothingness? You're dreaming.
Think, also, of the psychological factors involved. A silent killer, using a bow and arrow or a knife. It means he makes no noise, and is conversant in killing effectively at both close and medium range in equal measures. Also, if you were to ask people how they would prefer to die, most pick the 'quick' method-there is a human psychological aversion to pain and suffering and self discomfort. All of these thoughts would be going through the minds of the soldiers as they continuously find their comrades dead through unconventional means.