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This, in all likelihood, is not going to be that amusing of a read. Rambo 2 is when it really turns into over the top mindless violence as I understand it, while the original is an Actual Serious Movie. Based on a novel and everything. Also somewhat noteworthy is that technically speaking, the title of this movie isn't "Rambo" it's "First Blood." The thing of it is though that "First Blood 2" just sounds really silly. Rambo honestly sounds pretty silly too. Like some kind of half-ram half-deer Pokemon or something. It's easier to remember though I suppose. I really do have to stress though that this is the main character's name. John Rambo. Possibly of the New Hampshire Rambos.
Anyway, we start off with Rambo wandering around in Oregon trying to reconnect with old war buddies from Nam. The first one he tries to track down, as it turns out, has died of cancer, allegedly due to Agent Orange exposure. En route to the next one, a jerk cop rather politely just kinda nabs him and drives him out of town, due to some crazy bias he has against war vets. Seriously. When he attempts to walk back into town, crazy cop decides to arrest him. For uh... being a Vietnam vet? So his big ol' hunting knife is confiscated, and he's brought off to a jail cell by the rest of the fairly polite looking cops. This causes him to have a bit of a P.O.W. flashback. Actually filing all his paperwork is surprisingly difficult as he just kinda stands there stoically. Not giving his name, not printing his fingers... I have to say though, he can totally sue this police department on several grounds. Also, hi Sylvester Stalone'snaked butt!
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Attempting to... choke hold him and give him a shave causes another P.O.W. flashback, and accompanying freakout. I have to say though, even without the flashback to knife torture, this is a pretty justifiable freak out. These are some seriously corrupt cops, who seriously hate you, for really no logical reason whatsoever, holding a frelling blade to your throat while someone else is choking you from behind with a stick. You are totally justified in beating everyone up, and even fairly justified in running outside, stealing a passing motorcycle, and getting into a crazy chase scene through town and the local forest. At one point durin his chase, a pursuing cop's car slides off a bit of a cliff, overturning and crashing a few meters below. Much to my astoundment, it fails to burst into flames.
So anyway, he eventually loses the bike, and flees on foot to an abandoned shack full of junk, and starts using his Wilderness Survival Skills to uh... make himself a burlap tunic? I was kind of expecting a tent or a pit trap or something, but no, he just made a frelling tunic, put it on, and continued to run through the woods, looking now like a hardcore LARPer. The cops get some dogs and pursue him on foot through the forests of Endor. Or Oregon I guess. Anyway, eventually he comes to a sheer granite cliff he's trying to climb down, when a helicopter spots him. An extra rednecky cop pulls a rifle out and tries to shoot him. Now, again. Dude hasn't done anything that remotely warrants any of this. I mean, we've got maybe... 7 counts of assaulting an officer, and stealing a motorcycle. I suppose we've arguably got some resisting arrest in there too. Originally you were just arresting him for... having served in Vietnam though, so what the hell?
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Crazy heli-sniper is at least acknowledged as crazy by all the other cops, and falls to his death when Rambo throws a rock at the helicopter, freaking the pilot out, and causing him to swerve. This, incidentally, is after Rambo was forced to jump down, slicing his arm up, and having to sew it up in fairly bloody fashion. Interestingly enough, as the other cops catch up, Rambo... comes out with his hands up, expresses his regrets that someone just died, explaining that this was really just a horrible accident, and that there's no need to risk more lives on this crazy chase. The cops, being a bunch of irrational psychos here, all start shooting at him in response. With frelling assault rifles. So yeah, back to chasing. Of course, at this point, our hero has that first crazy cop's gun, and knows these freaks are just plain out to kill him, so he's whittling spikes and breaking dogs' necks, and shooting people in the leg and such. Also, just after they all start shooting at him, they learn that he's a decorated war hero and really, they should have been nicer to him. So... what? Before they thought he was just a generic drifter who bought a military jacket at the salvation army? That makes this whole scenario even weirder.
Anyway, the next cop to get an owie almost steps on an underbrush wearing Rambo, who pops up and... stabs him in the butt before running off. Apparently running off means running up a tree, to pounce on the next cop. Again, it bears mentioning that there's a fair deal of restraint being shown here. I mean, these cops are all getting shot and stabbed and otherwise severely injured, but everything's below the waist. At this point, Rambo pops up behind the cop who originally arrested him, and is clearly in charge of things, to observe this point, and more or less say "Seriously, just leave me alone, I'm harmless when not under threat." He also has a headband now, which he apparently made for himself around the same time as various spike traps and such.
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There's a bit of downtime, where everyone is brought up to speed, and head cop says "OK, yeah, beating up prisoners is wrong, but the correct response here is to come see him, and report that his deputies are arbitrarily beating prisoners, not to kick them in the face and flee. At this point, just as he's asking why god would make a man like Rambo, the colonel from the Metal Gear series wanders into the room and says, "God didn't make Rambo, I made him!" and then proceeds to generally play up how Rambo is totally awesome. He further advises that they just pack it in, go home, and deal with things later, when he eventually calms down, comes out of the woods, and returns to acting like a non-psycho. The cops, of course, ignore this totally reasonable advice. They try to have the colonel talk to him over the radio, which of course he has because he Got All From Corpse. They have a nice little chat, but ultimately, he declines the offer to leave his new tree fort, on the grounds that "they drew First Blood."
So, the next day, the police send in... like 50 guys with helmets, rain ponchos, and again, frelling assault rifles, to go get him. Rambo of course, by now, has already left the tree fort, and runs afoul of some random rednecks just out hunting. This leads to a rather tense situation of having to threaten a 15 year old for a moment before running off some more. We cut to Head Cop for a moment telling everyone on the radio that he wants no shooting, then immediately to like, 30 people shooting blindly at the old abandoned mine he's holed up in. Ah. It's officially the national guard after him at this point. The leader of whom asks "Who has the rocket launcher?" Again, excessive force much? So yeah. A rocket is launched. Shortly thereafter, Head Cop arrives to find the national guard posing and taking pictures, and yells at them some. Meanwhile, inside, Rambo makes a really really makeshift torch out of a strip off his tunic wrapped around a knife. Then he uses the light from that to make a real torch. So he crawls around through a flooded cave within the mine for a while, when suddenly he's attacked by a bunch of rats.
Outside, the Colonel continues to be the only sane character in the movie, pointing out how insane this whole situation is. Also, the next day, Rambo escapes from the cave, hops onto a national guard truck leaving the scene, slips inside, tosses the driver out, at a safe speed, and heads off. Cops hear about this pretty darn quick, and suddenly we're back into chase scene mode. At one point during this, there's finally an actual car exploding. There's also a road block'o'cops shooting at an oncoming truck to no effect. Getting generally clear, Rambo stops at a gas station, realizing that he can probably regain his presumed dead status by... plowing through the gas pumps and setting everything on fire before running off with just a ridiculously huge machine gun from the back. That or he just figured, and honestly rightly so, that this movie needed way more explosions. Quite a few more even. Stuff blows up for a while. For what it's worth, I'd say the movie has officially become silly now.
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Head Cop, now rather agitated, yells at the Colonel for a bit, and climbs up onto the roof. Incidentally it is now night again. I don't think there's more than three consecutive scenes in his movie taking place at the same time of day, which is really weird given how there don't seem to be a whole lot of actual breaks in the action at any point. In any case, Rambo is now looting a campaign goods store for flammable stuff. Apparently he's just kinda decided to blow this entire town up one building at a time. Fortunately, the whole place seems to be completely devoid of life, so we can maintain our official body count for the whole movie of just the one crazy guy falling out of a helicopter. Then he goes over and fires his big ol' machine gun at the police station until it's all totally swiss cheesed. I kinda have to wonder where the rest of the police force is now. Possibly the hospital, treating various wooden stake wounds to their legs. So anyway, we have Head Cop on the roof blindly firing a machine gun down, and Rambo inside firing up. Rambo wins, Head Cop falls through a sky light, Colonel comes in, and all the cops finally show up outside. Oh, and now we finally remember that we have the acting talents of Sylvester Stalone on tap, and he finally starts talking, pretty much for the first time the whole movie. "ITSNEVUROVAR!" Thus launches a big incoherently slurred cathartic verbal freak out and crying session. It's a weird mix of hilariously unintelligible and, depressing war vet ramble. So yeah, after that he agrees to come out peacefully, and the credits start rolling. We also get some inappropriately sappy music... oh wow. Inappropriately sappy music ABOUT THIS MOVIE'S PLOT. This is pretty great in the "Uh, WHY?" sense. It's up there with the ending credit music from Symphony of the Night.
Interestingly enough, there's two trailers in the special features here, both of which openly admit there is absolutely no justification for anything the cops do in this movie. I mean, word for word. "John Rambo was just passing through town, but they had nothing better to do. They knew he was innocent. They didn't know..." Both trailers in fact do NOTHING BUT explain how there is absolutely no justification for this movie's plot. Just: A bunch of cops totally try and kill some guy for absolutely no reason, but it turns out he's totally awesome. Oh, and seriously, can't stress this enough. It's not called Rambo, it's not called Rambo: First Blood. It's just called First Blood.
