Rambo: First Blood Part II [DVD] [1985]

Those rhetorical queries lead us to today's object lesson, "Rambo: First Blood Part II," the 1985 sequel to Stallone's "First Blood" (Part I). The original had the virtue of exploiting the plight of Vietnam vets in a way that was at least sympathetic in contrast to the onslaught of movies and television shows that insisted on making American troops back from Vietnam the replacement for all those aging Nazis as the bad guys. There were some pretty good action sequences as Rambo took on the local cops (especially the one in the forest), and then Stallone got to break his character's stoic silence and launch into a rant about how badly our troops were treated by the government and their fellow citizens when they returned. Then three years later we got "Rambo: First Blood Part II."

The title alone tells you that the emphasis is on the character, which we can acknowledge without going off the deep end on how the name has five letters and begins with a "R." The problem, and where the sequel fails compared to the original, is that the script has to find somebody stupid enough to make the mistakes that the hick sheriff did in the original and his sadistic deputy did the first time around. The set up is that Colonel Samuel Troutman (Richard Crenna) gets John Rambo (Stallone) out of prison for a black op to bring back POW's still being held in Vietnam by a sadistic prison camp commandant (William Ghent) and a Russian officer (Steven Berkoff). Rambo is teamed up with Co Bao (Julia Nickson), a former Vietnames freedom fighter, who manages to touch our hero's heart, every during all the excitement. Of course Rambo wants to get the POWs out of the prison camp, but he ends up being betrayed by the guy running the operation (Charles Napier) and his henchman (Martin Kove) as once again American foreign policy rears its ugly head. This means that Rambo is going to have to accomplish his mission regardless of what real echelons clowns might want.

Obviously the situation here is contrived, but it is the rare sequel that does not try to stick to the original proven formula as much as possible. The problems are that it is hard to believe that these people would go out of their way to bring a living killing machine as a loose cannon on a secret mission like this and that the film finds its relevance in keeping alive the idea that the Vietcong have been keeping American prisoners ever since the war ended. "Rambo: First Blood Part II" served as a rallying point for those who believed that to be the case, which I find being tantamount to adding insult to injury. If you accept the premise of the plot then the film has a certain power, but I cannot but consider the whole thing to be just too manipulative and exploitative.

Once again on the DVD for this sequel the extras tend to treat the film better than it deserves. Director George P. Cosmatos does the commentary track and despite some extended periods of silence does offer some insights into why things were done the way they were done. But I like the featurette in which "First Blood" author David Morrell discusses the entire Rambo trilogy in terms of Joseph Campbell's structure of myth. As some one who routinely makes students use highbrow theoretical concepts to look at popular culture texts, I love this kind of thing. Even better, Morrell is on track with his analysis. This does not make the film any better, but it does give a sense for some of the levels on which the film worked.