When Woody met Rocky

YOU wouldn't expect to find Sylvester Stallone in a Woody Allen comedy, but some may remember him in Bananas (1971), playing a bit part as a hoodlum.

Jack Thompson makes his screen debut in 1971 film Wake In Fright.

YOU wouldn't expect to find Sylvester Stallone in a Woody Allen comedy, but some may remember him in Bananas (1971), playing a bit part as a hoodlum.

It was his first film - the start of a career that produced two of Hollywood's great macho icons, Rambo and Rocky Balboa. Sly had no difficulty alternating between the roles, turning up one year as the two-bit boxer who makes good, then as everyone's favourite reactionary Vietnam vet.

Two of his films can be seen this Saturday. Rambo (5pm, M Action/Adventure), the fourth instalment in the series, is a 2008 US-German co-production in which big John rescues some captured missionaries and aid workers in Burma. There's no shortage of blood-letting.

In Rocky Balboa (Saturday, 6.40pm), the sixth in the Rocky series, our hero is now a lonely widower, running a restaurant in retirement before deciding - you've guessed it - to enter the ring for one last fight with the undefeated world heavyweight champ. And the winner is? You've guessed it again.

Cate Blanchett's first film was the World War II prisoner-of-war drama Paradise Road (Monday, 8.35pm, Fox Classics), written and directed by Bruce Beresford in 1997. She plays an Australian nurse, one of several women imprisoned in a Japanese internment camp in Sumatra after the fall of Singapore. To keep up morale they form a choir to perform orchestral classics.

Not, perhaps, one of Beresford's best, though the story can't fail to please. In addition to Blanchett, the top-flight cast includes Glenn Close, Frances McDormand, Jennifer Ehle and Wendy Hughes.

It may surprise some to know Ted Kotcheff, the Canadian director responsible for the first Rambo picture, First Blood, also directed Wake in Fright (Wednesday, 8.35pm, Fox Classics), one of the best Australian films. Based on Kenneth Cook's 1961 novel, it's the story of a young schoolteacher (Gary Bond) posted to a tiny outback town where he loses his money in a two-up game and plunges into a spiral of drink-fuelled violence, culminating in suicidal despair.

The negatives of the film were lost for more than 30 years before being discovered in a warehouse in Pittsburgh by the film's editor, Anthony Buckley, who worked with the National Film and Sound Archive to produce a beautifully restored print, re-released in 2009. There has been no more savage indictment of a certain type of Aussie macho culture, which may explain why the film did badly here on its first release. That ocker character is played by Jack Thompson (his first film).

He can be seen in another excellent film this week - The Assassination of Richard Nixon (Saturday, 8.30pm, Drama/Romance), based on the true story of the hijacking of a TWA flight at Baltimore-Washington airport in 1974 by a misfit who planned to crash the plane into the White House. Sean Penn is brilliant as deranged loner Sam Bicke.

CRITIC'S CHOICE

Wake in Fright (M)
4 stars
Wednesday, 8.35pm, Fox Classics

The Assassination of Richard Nixon (M)
3.5 stars
Saturday, 8.30pm, M Drama/Romance

Paradise Road (M)
3 stars
Monday, 8.35pm, Fox Classics