Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)
Quite often I have been told that the only John Rambo film worth watching is the original First Blood (1982), but I don’t think that’s true. This sequel is a severely underrated and often overlooked part of the Rambo franchise.
Although Rambo: First Blood II falls short of its predecessor, it’s a decent short action flick that contributes to the story of the US Special Forces veteran and titular character. At only 95 minutes long, one could easily sit through the whole thing without an all consuming drag of boredom, due to the intelligent pacing. The film saves its barrage of explosions and body counts for the last half hour, and the shots are done well enough to keep the violence from becoming overly exhausting. In fact, most of Rambo is dedicated to dialogue and themes surrounding the bureaucratic fall out after Vietnam. The combat scenes in the first two acts are well separated and wrap up quite quickly. Most of the drama is carried by Rambo’s conflict with the mission itself, the tension between Colonel Trautman and the CIA station chief Marshall Murdock, and the lingering tragedy of POWs left behind creates a good sentimental hook.
The only blemish that seriously irked me through the film is how poorly Julia Nickson’s character Co was written. How the fuck is it that she understands only every other word in the English language? I guess in 1985 this may have been perceived as normal by the casual film going audience, but since then there’s been a great leap forward in understanding the fallacies of such racial stereotypes. Also, the romantic twist that they briefly force into the opening part of the film’s third act is lame. I’m not sure if the intention was to humanize Rambo with a developing love story, but at no point does their romance ever appear interesting or even real. The two characters are hardly together long enough to develop any emotional chemistry, and yet we’re expected to believe that this lone wolf special forces operator falls head over heels with a stranger in the jungle over the course of about twenty four hours. However, it is just one blemish in an otherwise good flick.
John Rambo spends most of his time on the defensive or incapacitated by his foes. The torture sequence is one of the better interrogation scenes in this style of 80s cinema, and establishes the Russian officer Podovsky as a memorable part of the franchise. John Rambo is certainly a one man killing machine, but he utilizes his talents to evade or flee from the enemy as often as possible. In fact, most of the action shots occur when Rambo is taking on one or two goons at a time, and then he flees when the odds are drastically out of his favor. This helps to build a sense of realism around the special forces character. Of course several layers of plot armor are essential to protect the titular protagonist, but we’re not expected to believe in anything that is too far fetched.
It’s not until the final act that he goes onto the offensive, and the stealthy attacks used in these closing scenes were done well. In one part, Rambo kills a chicken to use its blood as bait into a trap for the Vietnamese army chasing him around a village. When the trap is set, Rambo uses explosive arrows to set dozens of soldiers on fire. It’s just a small sample of ingenuity that makes a lone wolf operative believable.
The standoff between the Vietnamese commander Captain Vinh and John Rambo on the rocks is one of the better scenes in the franchise, and is easily one of the finest death scenes in 80s action cinema. Once Rambo mounts a helicopter and lifts off with the POWs, the movie becomes an unstoppable blur of machine gun fire and fiery blasts. The wave of violence against the communists ends with Podovsky’s death, another great scene where the odds seemingly favor the villain until the last minute when John Rambo reveals the trap against his antagonist.
The movie ends with an obvious statement toward the system. Rambo is a soldier fighting multiple wars, including the battle between soldiers and the establishment that militaries operate under. After the mission’s conclusion, Rambo destroys Murdock’s operation center and walks off with a very simple message, “Find them, or I’ll find you,” he says, referring to the POWs still left behind across Vietnam. The movie ends with some more cool dialogue between Rambo and his senior officer Colonel Troutman, and leaves the fate of John Rambo a mystery until his next adventure.
