The actor Sylvester Stallone appears to have won a new group of fans with his latest blood-and-guts action adventure, which sees his ageing character Rambo take on the Burmese army. Among the crowds outside the UK premiere in London were Burmese activists, eager to thank Stallone for raising awareness about the country's ongoing internal trouble.

"I said if we could touch on something that actually has an impact on people's lives, because actually as we are speaking right now there is a civil war going on, but nobody knows about it, but now they do. So I kind of feel vindicated by that," Stallone said.

Despite lukewarm reviews in the West, the film is said to be an underground hit in Burma itself, where police are reported to be enforcing a ban on DVD copies.

But pirated copies are apparently widely available. One resident of Yangon told an international news agency that people who have endured 45 years of strict military rule are hungry for the film's tagline, which says "Live for Nothing, Die for Something."