Rambo: First Blood Part II

First Blood is not the type of film that needs a sequel.  It’s perfectly self-contained and doesn’t hint at new adventures or leave plotlines unresolved.  Where do you go with the main character?

We start appropriately with Rambo in prison breaking rocks.  After the shit he pulled a few years prior in Washington this is exactly where he should be.  Colonel Trautman (Richard Crenna (Body Heat)) visits Rambo to make him an offer.  They want to sneak him into Vietnam on recon to check on American prisoners of war who have been held there since the 70’s.  Rambo accepts instantly.  The issue is the commander in charge of the operation, Murdock (Charles Napier (Philadelphia, Original Gangstas)), only wants photos taken, no liberating.  It turns out Murdock doesn’t give a shit about the POWs.  He’s only doing this to placate his superiors.  Of course Rambo defies orders and goes for the rescue anyway.

Since no one was gonna make a movie about John Rambo’s ongoing struggling relationship with his country, brothers in arms, mentors, civilians and own mental health I guess the scenario they came up with makes as much sense as anything else.  Let’s see the guy in his natural element: war.  There are still ideology differences between he and authority figures but the main fight is with the Vietnamese and the Soviets.  Don’t fret though, the bureaucrats get their comeuppance.

There’s a stiffness to First Blood Part II that’s apparent to begin with but after having just seen First Blood the contrast is pretty stark.  Rambo isn’t a tragic figure here who loses grip on reality.  Instead he’s simply a meathead on a mission.  They tried to insert a love interest to make it more like a typical action movie and maybe to make him more relatable but man does it feel extremely forced.

And ok sure, you’re not gonna watch a Rambo sequel for the nuances in plot or character.  You can certainly have both but I get it, just blow stuff up real good.  Well a big problem with the action is it all blends together.  It’s Rambo shooting up or stabbing dudes for the most part.  They didn’t really come up with cool or inventive sequences.  The last twenty minutes where Rambo uses a helicopter to blow the fuck out of everything in sight does make you sit up and take notice but only because of how over the top it is.

It also doesn’t help that Rambo’s invincible now which reduces any sense of danger.  He gets tangled up in his gear while jumping out of a plane, tortured and constantly shot at.  No matter the situation he muscles through it.  At one point Rambo doesn’t even pretend anymore and stands unprotected in front of a bad guy unloading his pistol on him.  Nothing touches him.

Strangely I kept being reminded of Escape from New York during this last viewing which came out the year before.  You have an inmate recruited to infiltrate a dangerous place solo in order to retrieve some folks held captive.  They both drop the hero in by plane, rendezvous with an ally already inside, eventually get captured by the enemy and make a daring escape.

It’s impossible to ignore the James Cameron connection here.  Cameron worked as a matte painter on Escape from New York and wrote the original script for First Blood Part II.  Maybe he borrowed some ideas.  I dunno, Stallone rewrote it so I’m not sure how much of Cameron’s shit made it into the final product, probably not a ton.

It’s interesting though that like First Blood Part II Cameron’s own Aliens also goes off the fucking rails, especially when compared to their predecessors.  These might be the two most extreme examples of a first sequel taking it three levels higher than needed.  However, unlike First Blood Part II Aliens is a masterpiece that builds on the characters and Alien universe in a creative and more natural way.

My buddy summed up Part II perfectly by pointing out there’s no heart.  There’s no emotional investment and that in part doesn’t make it all that fun either.  We should be rooting for John to get the POWs out and all the tension that goes with that.  The POWs are supposed to be driving the plot but it turns into mindless killing and an unnecessary subplot about Murdock being a slimy asshole who doesn’t actually want to help anybody.

The only positive I can say is that they didn’t lazily rehash the first movie with Rambo snapping again and going on a rager against the law or another group of people in some small town.  They scaled it up significantly but too much in my opinion by having Rambo battle two armies.  I mean the body count is 67 compared to 1 in First Blood.

So I’m not too keen on this one.  You could start thirty minutes from the end and be in the same place mentally as if you watched from the beginning.  I might recommend doing that if you’re curious about the ridiculous spectacle it turns into.