History Film / RamboIII

* ArtisticLicenseMilitary: Colonel Zaysen leads his unspecified unit of dubious size and structure from a small mountain fort, doesn't answer to any superiors (nor liaise with any different units), and has enough free time to personally participate in helicopter raids and torture prisoners. And he wears a green leather jacket! In short, Zaysen is far closer to small-time warlord than to commander in much bigger army.
** To put things in to perspective, typical position for a colonel would be CO of motorized rifle regiment, comprised out of ca. 2200 men equipped with hundreds of armored vehicles and its own tank battalion.

* ArtisticLicenseHistory: While the movie claims Afghanistan has never been conquered throughout all of its history to portray its people as {{Proud Warrior Race Guy}}s, this is not quite the case. While the various peoples of Afghanistan perfectly constitute a badass warrior race, the country ''has'' been conquered, occupied and pacified by several empires including Alexander's, the Samanids, the Rashidun Khilafat, the Kwarezmians, the Mongols and succeeding states, the Timurids, the Safavids, the Mughals and several others. Though in fairness, some of these empires may be considered indigenous to the region, such as the Samanids and Khwarezmians.

** While trench can be explained as a part of natural landscape, light blue pickup truck (with .50 cal mounted), conveniently parked near them, certainly can not. Note that said truck just appears out of the nowhere, and its appearance right in the middle of the desert is never addressed by anyone.

* CrewOfOne: In the climatic battle, Rambo is able to drive a Soviet tank while at the same time loading and firing the main gun and coaxial machine gun. Well, T-72 features an autoloader, but aiming and firing from the driver' station is out of the question. Neither is driving the tank from the gunner' station.
** On a side note, Rambo hit this tank with an incendiary bottle, and its crew immediately started to bail out, suggesting that engine was disabled. Then Rambo kills the crew and takes the tank for a ride, like no damage to it was done.

* HollywoodTactics: Soviet gunships circle on very low altitude right above attacked village, firing from point blank range. In real life helicopters are very vulnerable to machinegun fire, and dozens of Soviet choppers were lost in Afghanistan to automatic rifle and heavy machinegun fire. Correct attack run pattern would include firing rockets from 2km away, cannons from 1.5km, and turning off the target at 1km.

%%* LaResistance: The Mujahadeen.

* ShownTheirWork: Rather bizarre example, considering how many things this film got wrong. Soviet helicopters had "excellent aircraft" marking. This award was given to maitenance crews for meeting exceptional standards in keeping aircraft working and combat-ready.

* TheGuardsMustBeCrazy: When Rambo infiltrates Soviet compound for the second time, security isn't improved at all. Very laid-back sentry, supposedly manning a machinegun accidentally sees Rambo and, instead of quickly grabbing the rifle near him, tries to rotate the large .50 cal around, losing the time and life.
* TooDumbToLive: At the end of the film Colonel Zaysen decides to ram Rambo with his Mi-24 helicopter while Rambo is in a T-72 tank. Just to make things clear: a fully-loaded Hind Helicopter weighs 9 tons, while a T-72 tank weighs ''42 tons''. Helicopters need to be light enough to fly, while tanks are only expected to be heavy enough and tough enough to survive bullets and shells. It ends as exactly as you would expect. Not to mention that Hind normally carries anti-tank missiles and dozens of unguided rockets to deal with armored targets.
** Considering, how inept are Soviet forces in the film, one can wonder why Mujahadeen were unable to destroy Zaysen' camp with portable mortars and RPG strikes.
* UniversalDriversLicense: Rambo surely got one. While second movie established that he was cross-trained as helicopter pilot, here he is easily hijacks the Mi-24. Rambo wouldn't have any idea about its cockpit layout and startup procedure beforehand, for example.
** He also can't be familiar with T-72 tank controls. Don't stop him from starting to kick ass right after he climbs in.

** On a side note, Rambo hit this tank with an incendiary bottle, and its crew immediately starts to bail out, suggesting that engine was disabled. Then Rambo kills the crew and takes the tank for a ride, like no damage to it was done.

** Soviet invasion is portrayed as a full-blown conquest without a cause, rather than intervention to support local pro-communist regime. Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and the Afghan Army is not even mentioned.

* ImproperlyPlacedFirearms: Though the film was able to get access to some genuine Soviet hardware due to being filmed in Israel, they still had to make do with stand-ins on a few occasions, including [=AKMs=] and [=AKMSUs=] mocked up to resemble the smaller-caliber AK-74 and AKS-74U, and Kourov's AK having an M203 launcher that [[http://www.imfdb.org/images/8/84/Rambo3-AKM2034A.jpg clearly wasn't made to work with it]]. Things got worse when production was forced to relocate back to the USA, and instead of actual Soviet armor we got a T-72 and ZSU-23 Shilka replicas made out of an M8 artillery tractor chassis,

* RareGuns: Geniune Soviet weaponry were provided by Israeli armorers.

* UniversalDriversLicense: Rambo surely got one. While second movie established, that he was cross-trained as helicopter pilot, here he is easily hijacks the Mi-24. Rambo wouldn't have any idea about its cockpit layout and startup procedure beforehand, for example.

* ShownTheirWork: Rather bizarre example, considering how many things are this film got wrong. Soviet helicopters had "excellent aircraft" marking. This award was given to maitenance crews for meeting exceptional standards in keeping aircraft working and combat-ready.

* FridgeHorror: In the end, survived Soviets can be seen taken as prisoners. One can guess what expects them in Mujahadeen captivity...
** Since Zaysen's unit was totally wiped out, Soviet Army probably will strike back with full-scale couter-insurgency operation. And that villagers thought that two attack helicopters is bad...

* MohsScaleOfViolenceHardness: It rates a rather a hard 6 (it might actually be strong enough for a 7). There are tons of blood squibs, but they generally don't spurt or splatter liquid blood in a noticeable, explicit way (although there are some puffs of blood vapor). There's also some harsh torture in there, too.

%%* EnemyMine: See TheGreatPoliticsMessUp below.

* TheGreatPoliticsMessUp: In this movie, the Afghan mujahideen are portrayed as heroic characters, fighting back against the DirtyCommies trying to invade their land. Nowadays, such characterization is practically unseen in mainstream Western media post 9/11.

%%* RailingKill

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: One of the Mujahadeen is a little boy who follows Rambo on a secret mission despite Rambo’s protests; instead of being an assist, the kid gets wounded by a Soviet bullet and doesn’t even get to do anything badass. In a darker movie, this kid would’ve been killed.

** Considering, how inept are Soviet forces in the film, one can wonder why Mujahadeen was unable to destroy Zaysen' camp with portable mortars and RPG strikes.

* ContrivedCoincidence: In the finale, Rambo and Trautman stays in the open, facing Soviet forces. Coincidentally, there is a convenient trench near them to provide cover.

* ArtisticLicenseMilitary: Colonel Zaysen leads his unspecified unit of dubious size and structure from a small mountain fort, doesn't answer to any superiors (nor liaise with any different units), and have enough free time to personally participate in helicopter raids and torture prisoners. And he wears a green leather jacket! In short, Zaysen is far closer to small-time warlord than to commander in much bigger army.