Why is it this film feels more violent than IV
Watch both films back to back, it's fascinating to notice that despite depictions of more graphic brutality of the last film, this one retains a sense of far more realism just by seeing the events (through the camera) by the distance as if we were there standing there, in a way it gets rid of anything seemingly staged, watch the attack on the tribe in the middle of the film for example, horse falling is really horse falling (which i would see as animal cruelty too), a man falling on the ground from being shot without any distracting hollywoodish *cut* or slow-mo puts the viewer right there on the battlefield. This film has far more sense of gravity and respect for the psychology and place of human eye and brain. Howard Hawks, John Ford and Eastwood believed in the same invisible technique, the more you show off your own style or technique (irrationaly moving your own camera, aerial shots where no human eye would ever be at that moment of time in the film) the more you lose a sense of connection between the film's reality and the audience. Why do you tink that films have become so artificial in the recent years, because they have become more technical, more stylization, cuts, slow-mo, etc...
I like Sly's "visible" technique in Rocky IV for example, i didn't need too much realism there, but where it fails is in the films where you try to be realistic, because your style backfires at you and gets in the way of realism so to speak. In this way, Rambo III is more realistic even thought the story events of the film are clearly out of this world, but ironically they are more believable for the way they are shot and presented to public.
I'm convinced a little study of human psychology would reveal the way we perceive outside stimuli is the way like i'm describing here.
ps: Rambo III has also a few irrational close-ups though, but not enough to get us out of the picture like Rambo IV.