Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)

While the first Rambo movie proved a surprisingly capable and contemplative vehicle for exploring American’s conflicted feelings towards the Vietnam War, the second film in the series is a prime example of revisionist Reaganite Cinema. Three years after the events of the first film, John Rambo is doing hard time for his little post-traumatic rampage in the Pacific North-West. Our hero is offered the chance at a presidential pardon if he agrees to go on a covert mission into Vietnam looking for missing POW’s. Rambo of course agrees to do this, unfortanitly the bureaucrats who green lit the mission never expected him to find actual missing veterans!. Not wanting to deal with the political consequences of sending a full fledged rescue mission into Nam, the head bureaucrat on the scene decides to abandon Rambo, the POW’s, and the beautiful Viet recon agent, to both the local communists and their Soviet allies. Rambo of course will have none of this, and in his decidedly unsubtle, explosive style sets about to free himself and the others. This film lacks the poignant sense of sorrow that so distinguished it predecessor , and instead attempts to give us a kind of wronged triumphilism, that while well received by audiences at the time, I found to fall completely flat. I cared about Rambo in the first film, but here I found I felt next to nothing. The action, complete with torture, machine guns, napalm and all the fixings just seemed to pass on the screen, and I felt board! It went through the motions, but somehow managed to avoid the emotions. If this film is this disappointing, I’m really kind of scarred to see the ill-regarded part three. 1 1/2 out of 5.