New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Matters aren’t helped with Stallone’s ill-conceived final monologue, a howl of pain/plea for sympathy that registers instead as a wall of vowels held together by a mouthful of peanut butter. The project, based on a 1972 book, passed through innumerable hands on its way to fruition, and among the more noticeable changes in the final filmed version (for which Stallone receives co-screenplay credit) are that Rambo lives, he is painted as a misunderstood and sympathetic character, and that he wounds many but kills none. Rambo First Blood Part II (hereafter referred to as Rambo II since that title strikes me as being as egregious an affront to syntax and logic as The Neverending Story II) aimed to remedy those latter two missteps, but good.

1985 was Stallone’s commercial, and ideological, high-water mark. Between Rambo II in the summer and Rocky IV in the fall/winter, he racked up nearly $300 million in domestic receipts and an equal amount worldwide. Rambo II was the highest grossing (in straight dollars) of any film in either franchise and it is worth noting that it grossed $100 million more than any of the other three Rambos (which all settled in the $40-$50 million range). It behaved instead like a de facto Rocky sequel, grossing slightly more than that series did at its moneymaking zenith (Rocky III and IV each grossed around $125 million, with the first Rocky not far behind). Part of the huge success of Rambo II relative to First Blood could be attributed to the latter’s smash success on home video and pay cable, functioning much the same way as The Terminator did for T2, but without as long a wait.

But Rambo II also swerved the series in a radically different direction, that Rambo III and Rambo would adhere to: John Rambo was no longer a misfit fighting to get out from under the thumb of the man, but the highly skilled, nearly indestructible war machine the first film purported him to be, set loose on the killing fields of the world. He was now a man of the world with no country to call his own. If Rocky IV was the story of a Stallone character single-handedly and proactively winning the Cold War, then Rambo II is the story of a Stallone character single-handedly (almost) and retroactively winning the Vietnam War. With a screenplay by Stallone and James Cameron and direction by George P. Cosmatos, Rambo II is a working definition of what I refer to as “superaction." There is no explosion too big, no machine gun with too many bullets, no stunt fall too outrageous.

With a bare minimum of plot semantics to get out of the way (about 15 minutes worth, same as First Blood), Rambo II rescues its hero from hard labor with the chance to serve his country once again, this time on a mission to search for and document the possible existence of American POWs in Vietnam. Rambo interprets this request as “terminate Vietcong and Russian soldiers with extreme prejudice” and the film proceeds for a breathless hour or so of heads ripped by bullets, necks snapped by hands, and the occasional body detonated via explosive-tipped arrow, with only a brief pause when Rambo is captured and tortured on an electrified box spring.

Continued:       1       2       3       4       5