Rambo is back in Vietnam, to full house

HANOI (Reuters Life!) - John Rambo is back in communist-ruled Vietnam on Friday, playing to a full house as cinemas showed the Vietnam War veteran going to battle in his latest film, this time against the Myanmar junta.

"Rambo" the fourth in the war action movie series starring Sylvester Stallone, is the first to be shown in Vietnamese cinemas, although videotapes and DVDs of the other three movies have been circulating for years.

Cinemas in the capital, Hanoi, and in southern cities where the U.S. military had bases during the 1960s and 1970s war, on Friday screened "Rambo" which has the main character fighting in the jungles of Myanmar to save Christian missionaries.

"The film attracted more people than usual," said an information officer at the Megastar cinema in Bien Hoa, 50 km (30 miles) northeast of Ho Chi Minh City, still called Saigon by many.

She said she had not watched the film and similarly most young Vietnamese, many born after the war ended in 1975, have not seen Rambo fighting Vietnamese troops to rescue U.S. soldiers held captive in "Rambo: First Blood Part II" the second film, which was released in 1985.

That film accused the Vietnam government of still holding U.S. prisoners of war, but Hanoi rejected it as untrue. In real life, the United States and Vietnam cooperate on finding the remains of soldiers killed on both sides of the conflict and their diplomatic relations are friendly.

Hanoi's diplomatic policy is "to close the past and look forward to the future", a sign of which would be its permission to screen the Rambo film even though it is critical of the military rulers of Myanmar, which like Vietnam, is a member of the Association of South East Asian Nations.

In the latest film, which opened in North America in January, Rambo -- best known for mowing down enemies with an M60 machine gun in the 1980's -- comes out of retirement in Thailand to save a group of Christian missionaries from a sadistic Myanmar army major.

"First Blood" (1982) showed Rambo running into trouble with police at home while looking for friends from the war, one of the most traumatic periods in U.S. history.

In "Rambo: First Blood Part III" (1988) he fought the Soviet Army in Afghanistan to rescue his superior officer.

(Reporting by Ho Binh Minh; editing by Grant McCool and Sanjeev Miglani)