I’ve recently seen the Rambo trilogy (2nd, 3rd, 1st…don’t ask). I’m well aware that any character involved in three movies spread out over about six years is going to be a bit complicated (particularly since in the original story he doesn’t even have any future after First Blood). That said, I find him, if not perplexing, at least hard to pin down.
Okay, let’s start with the facts:
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Embittered Vietnam vet. One of the returning vets who was actually spat on and harbors a lot of resentment over this. Unalbe to hold a job, get a home, etc. makes him even more resentful.
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Prone to violence, but not berserk. Very calculated, controlled anger, in fact; knows just how much force to use to maim an enemy but not kill him (worked to perfection in First Blood); not prone to screaming rages unless really, really pushed.
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Simple sense of justice and righteousness. He fights for freedom and against tyrrany, and he never gives an inch.
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Doesn’t take crap from anybody if he can help it. He’ll endure pain if he’s helpless, but he’s always looking for a way out (and usually finds it).
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Ambivalent toward America: Loves it deep down, but still too bitter to return. He simply follows his heart (which is probably also why he never married).
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Very strong and durable, but within the limits of what is possible for a human being. He feels pain, he feels thirst, he bruises, he bleeds (one excellent and definitely not for the squeamish scene in Rambo 3 as to how he deals with the latter problem). In a bare-knuckle fight between him and Indiana Jones, he’d lose after about, oh, 20 minutes. And no, I don’t know how he did that vertical leap in First Blood Part 2…an underground spring or sumpthin’.
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Tremendous fighting ability, but again, within human limits. Two soldiers, piece of cake. Six soldiers, a little more of a challenge. 200 soldiers? Pray for backup. What he’s really good at is using terrain and cover to divide up a large force and take it out as piecemeal as possible (fantastic example of this in First Blood).
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Aptitude with a huge variety of weapons (including plain 'ol sticks).
In First Blood, the remarkable thing is that he takes great care to minimize the carnage. His beef is with that fat pig of a sherriff, not the good people of Hope, and besides, you can’t frighten the dead. This would indicate to me that for all his beliefs and sense of justice, he understands the need for restraint, and that multiple life sentences aren’t going to do him any good. At this point, he’s fighitng a purely personal war and relents only when he has no way out.
First Bood Part 2 presents him with a dilemma from the get-go. Why bother fighting for his freedom only to run into more closed-minded twits like Will Teasle? His tone changes quickly when he finds out POWs are at stake, however. Note that for nearly the entire rocky mission, even after he escapes captivity, he takes great trouble to avoid beeing seen and kills his foes one at a time with precise, quite shots. He’s a lot more Solid Snake than Bill Rizer. Only after he’s fortunate enough to take over a Soviet helicopter that he goes into full-bore blast-'em-to-pieces mode. And yes, he does save all the POWs.
Rambo 3 is a bit unusual because it takes Rambo to a place that’s never been our enemy. In fact, it’s precisely because it’s the enemy of our enemy that we’re there. In any case, there needs to be more explanation than usual as to what Rambo is doing there in the first place. Initially, he’s there for a purely personal reason, to save Colonel Trautman. But after seeing the brutality of the Soviet occupiers, he knows what more must be done. (No doubt his captivity in FBP2 made taking the war to him an even easier decision.)
One his most interesting or disturbing beliefes, depending on where you’re coming from, is that he thinks we should’ve won in Vietnam. That means that he supported that repulsive, greety, tyrranical right-wing dictator of South Vietnam (or at least thought that if the South Vietnamese didn’t like him, they should get rid of him themselves). So he truly was ferociously political, and in particular, anti-Communist…if he were just a good soldier, he wouldn’t have notice a dime’s worth of difference between the hammer and sickle and President Diem.
Something changed along the way, however. He supported Afghanistan in the fight for freedom, and now (I haven’t seen the fourth movie yet, just read descriptions) he believes in fighting oppression wherever it exists. I’d like to think that it wass his experience fighting for the Mujahadeen that finally convinced him that justice is color blind. His years with peaceful Buddhists might also have mellowed his outlook.
Whatever the truth is, I have to say that he’s a mighty interesting character. Especially for a blood-and-guts killing machine. 
What say you?
P.S.: We’re all smart people, so we know 1. the difference between a citizen army fighting for freedom and a bunch of murderous nuts flying planes into buildings, 2. that Al Quaea is a Saudi organization, and targeting Afghanistan was nothing more than cheap scapegoating, 3. that if we really hated Osama Bin Laden, we would’ve made more of an effort to catch him, 4. it’s silly to judge a 1988 movie with 20/20 retrospect, 5. it’s craven to judge anything with 20/20 retrospect, 6. it’s ludicrous, if not downright insane, to underplay just how huge an enemy the USSR was and how bitter and heated the Cold War was, and 7. in any case, it’s outrageous to judge an entire nation by the actions of a handful of ruling party jerks? Okay, good.