Rambo: First Blood Part II




Sir, do we get to win this time?

Rambo loses just about all of his credibility from First Blood and attracts a massive following in the process. I guess a lot of people were just fed up with antiwar vibes in general.

Picking up a little after where the first film left off, John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) is breaking rock and serving his time to society. That is until his former CO, Col. Trautman (Richard Crenna), offers a deal to get him a pardon. All he has to do is sneak back into Vietnam to search for POWs left over from the war. But Rambo's problems don't just come from hostile Vietnamese or even sadistic Russians, as he's still considered just as expendable as ever.

While it's perfectly debatable that Rambo II is a decent action flick in and of itself, there are inevitably enough compromises made that the overall effort comes off as cheesy. That's too bad, since the beginning half ain't half bad, though the whole Vietnam thread is never quite done deftly enough to escape campiness either. But the defining quality of the movie, that Rambo is an invincible American killing machine, which is of course the majority of the franchise's appeal, is the biggest trip up. It's not even like the guy can bleed, as this was the era of the super action hero (later with Schwarzenegger). There's also the infamous kiss of death scene (or at least it should be infamous), which is invariably just plain embarrassing. Otherwise, there are more than enough guns, explosions, and bad guys paying their dues to whet any action monger's appetite.

Stallone puts on his dependable Rambo-as-victim persona, though corners are cut and he becomes more cardboard than human. The boat scene he has is nice, but hardly enough to lean the entire film on. Richard Crenna is passable as the typical buddy/commander guy, and Charles Napier is at least believable as the baloney bureaucrat. Then there's Julia Nickson-Soul, whose accent is, needless to say, not fooling anyone.

More fantasy than war film, it would probably be better just to stick with Part I for this trilogy.



-The Gnome