Another view

Andy McNab on Rambo

It felt more like a bad Xbox shoot-em-up than a film. Even the action went up in levels, from bullets to explosions to the big boss shoot-out at the end. Actually, there's more plot and character in most video games. The story - Rambo rescues aid workers from nasty Burmese infantry - is about as simple as it gets. There were only about 20 people in the cinema and we emerged as best mates, giggling at the stupid dialogue.

I could spend all day picking technical holes in the combat. Rambo commandeers this big heavy-calibre weapon, and of course his machine-gun rounds magically hit the bad guys, not the good guys. The way his gun - a .50 calibre machine gun - actually fires, everybody would have been killed, good and bad alike, just because of the arc of fire. The way they used sniper rifles was pretty ridiculous as well - sometimes they were so close to the enemy that the optic sight wouldn't have been able to focus.

The trouble is, we've become so accustomed to movie violence that we think real combat is the same thing. The Americans have a lot of trouble with police recruits who insist on holding their weapons next to their faces, because they've seen it in the movies. But the only reason film-makers do that is to get the gun and the star's face into the same shot.

The wimpy aid workers were all wrong. From my experience on drugs operations in Colombia, I can tell you: these people, even the missionary groups, are hard. They're not crying and manicuring their nails every five minutes. They're tough. They have to be.

For me, the film feels 20 years out of date. Still, Stallone is not a fool - chances are Rambo will do brilliantly in Asia and Russia. It's not as though there's much dialogue to distract a non-English-speaking audience

· Andy McNab is an SAS soldier turned novelist. Rambo is on general release