Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)

Directed by: George P. Cosmatos | 97 minutes | action, drama, thriller, adventure | Actors: Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Charles Napier, Steven Berkoff, Julia Nickson-Soul, Martin Kove, George Cheung, Andy Wood, William Ghent, Voyo Goric, Dana Lee, Baoan Coleman, Steve Williams, Don Collins, Christopher Grant, John Sterlini, Alain Hocquenghem, William Rothlein, Tony Munafo, Tom Gehrke

As minimalist as ‘First Blood’ sometimes was in 1982, so extravagant is the follow-up: ‘Rambo: First Blood Part II’. In part one, the lone Vietnam veteran, John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone), was harassed and provoked by arrogant sheriffs from a bland town. But in part two, Rambo is larger than life. Everything that was so surprising in the first part is magnified in part two until you come to the conclusion that this film doesn’t deliver what its reputation promised. Schematically, you can say that the first part of ‘Rambo II’ scores a pass to collapse like a house of cards in the second part.

‘Rambo II’ starts with an apparently modest Stallone who has to go to the interior of Vietnam for a rotten job. The people in charge of the operation are so cunning it’s almost laughable. In addition, they command more rank than Colonel Trautman (Richard Crenna); the only person Rambo trusts. Then we learn that Rambo’s mission consists of photographing a group of American POWs in an apparently abandoned camp (liberate it, just wait!). This fact alone makes you realize that the story isn’t going to be too good. The suspicion is confirmed when a lot of ‘coincidences’ later mean that Rambo has to deal with both Vietnamese and Russians without outside help. It is also very coincidental that the POWs have been changing places weekly for years and are just in the camp when Rambo is around.

But hey, this is Hollywood! Okay, you can ignore the value of a good story and focus on pure action and – that is to say – you’ll have a good time. Rambo is nothing short of a thrill in the jungles of Vietnam, where he is faster and more resourceful than all those people who have spent their entire lives there. Here we also see the Rambo that we can still remember from the past: dressed in a camouflage suit, with well-polished muscles, red headband and the inevitable survival knife that, by the way, comes in handy several times. We get to know the Vietnamese as a sadistic people, if we are to believe the images. For example, at one point Rambo hangs for hours in a pool of human excrement and the Vietnamese don’t sleep for a second. And because it was still Cold War in 1985, there are also Russians and they are no sweethearts either.

No, it’s unhumans who torture Rambo with electroshocks or brand him with a big knife. The man who tortures Stallone is the prototype of a Russian (or: as Hollywood wants to show a Russian): big, strong and without many words, like Ivan Drago in 1985’s ‘Rocky IV’; also a movie starring Stallone. The character of Rambo is one of the highlights in a largely disappointing film: a man of few words, who goes through fire. A machine that cannot be distracted from its mission, as its superiors will find out. Furthermore, ‘Rambo II’ resembles an orgy of violence, which is far from the cry ‘make love, not war’, which was heard more and more during the Vietnam conflict. Dozens of trained soldiers shoot at the American hero, but everything must lead to John Rambo’s triumphal march in Vietnam, the country the Americans have such bad memories of.