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The sequel to First Blood, which ignores the obvious choice of calling it Second Blood, starts off with Rambo busting rocks in a prison. Why is that always the prison job you see in movies anyway? License plate making is more traditional in the real world, and I've never really understood the value of the work. Anyway though, yeah, I was kind of expecting this to be a prequel, but no. This is a sequel. Rambo goes to jail for blowing up a small town. Colonel Troutman, which is his actual awesome name, cuts a deal with the government some time later to have him let out to uh... be sent back into Vietnam to rescue P.O.W.s. Because that's TOTALLY healthy for someone prone to having flashbacks to being a P.O.W. in Vietnam, right? Anyway, this movie is officially called Rambo: First Blood Part II. Which is one of those confusing, subtitle first sorta things, not unlike Backlash: Oblivion 2. So, point is, technically speaking, Rambo is actually the name of the second movie, not the first, and many a display case and review has lied to you.
Rambo is greeted at the military outpost by someone with a weird frowny face button pinned to his jacket that calls him "the chosen one." Now, he's saying that like a joke of course, but I'm lead to understand any other characters he's sent in with are going to die real quick, and then he's going to kill something like 100 people. Of course, the actual mission he's being sent on is just to go to a P.O.W. camp and take pictures of any imprisoned Americans that may be there. The Colonel is also telling him he's going to be using a whole bunch of high tech gadgetry, which I don't believe will prove true. This does however lead into a room full of ridiculous computer equipment. Particularly ridiculous because this movie is from 1985. We had real computers then. I mean, we still had big blinky mainframes, but they weren't being called cutting edge technology. This was the era when people would take an Apple ][ and hack into the government with it. Of course, this IS the government here, so hey. Anyway, we get one of those equipment readying scenes. Putting knives into holsters, bullets into ammo clips, film into cameras, arrows into a quiver, explosive arrowheads into a little box... OK, seriously, what's with the exploding arrows? I knew that was in this movie, but I figured it was a crazy improvisation sorta thing. These are standard military issue? Or rather, special military issue? That's just weird.
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By the way, the DVD here had some weird crazy feature I didn't turn on called Survival Mode, which apparently overlays radar and crosshairs over all sorts of stuff so you can pretend you're playing Metal Gear Solid 3 or something. If you really want to capture that vibe though, you need the James Bond style song about eating tree frogs. Anyway though, it's time to parachute in, and uh, wouldn't you know it, his seat belt gets caught on the door. No, seriously. So he just pulls out a knife and starts cutting stuff until he drops loose. This involves dropping all his high tech spy gear it seems, but luckily, not his parachute. Everyone at home just goes "OK, that kinda sucked, wanna just forget the whole thing? So we get some arbitrary time limit here. We also have Rambo giving a snake a dirty look... and a weird number of big fancy statues for a jungle in the middle of nowhere. Rambo jumps the nearest sentry who turns out to be a girl that screams RUMBO at him. Apparently this is his local contact. Always gotta have a local contact and all. Who wants to bet she gets captured at some point?
So they head off to a hidden pirate camp to get a boat. Various people shoot eachother nasty looks. There's a lot of totally untranslated Vietnamese being spoken in this movie oddly enough. "Rumbo! Want to eat?" Somehow calling him Rumbo is funnier than calling him Rambo. Also, contact here speaks Cavemanese it seems. "What mean expendable?" "It bring me good luck." It's... just plain offensive. I mean, this isn't some kid who picked up a little english from passers by, this is a trained spy type. And really, I don't think anyone can actually end up talking like that unless they learned English from Tarzan Tonto and Frankenstein. Anyway, they eventually near the camp, in time to see a hooker on a motorcycle in a silk dress get waved in. At this point, Rambo decides to abandon his orders, and start firing some exploding arrows at people. Shame on you Rambo. What you were supposed to do is say "That gives me an idea..." and disguise yourself as another motorcycle riding high class prostitute! How dare you waste a classic comedy setup like that? So here's the P.O.W.s. One looks a bit like Tony Shaloub. So he does some freeing, kills someone with a throwing knife, another guy gets ARROW'D! A third gets ARROW'D in the forehead, which is weird. Oh, and he only rescued the one dude. As evidence I guess. Contact girl is rather surprised that there were any P.O.W.s in the camp, but apparently was... cool with her countrymen getting killed by someone confirming it was empty? The hell?
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On the way out, it turns out the sketchy pirate captain they were hitching a ride with decided to double cross them. So... Rambo just kinda grabs someone's shotgun and kills everyone on the board we don't care about. Then a machine gun boat attacks, so out comes the rocket launcher. And oh hey! Missed someone! Can he deal with the guy strangling him before the boat he just blew up crashes into them and explodes more? Just barely. And seriously. The flaming wreckage of the boat he hit with a rocket crashes into their boat and there is a huge additional explosion. Contact girl randomly assures Rumbo that "You not expendable." So yeah, she has a very wide vocabulary, it's just missing articles and common verbs. You know, the most common things for english speakers to say. So anyway, they dash through a rice field with mortar shells going off to get to da choppah. Suddenly, the random jerk back at base camp in charge of this mission orders them to abort the mission because... he's determined not to get the proof he needs for his mission to be successful. Apparently he's just cartoonishly evil or something. The Colonel runs in to shout what the hell at him. OK, apparently, the idea here is that if they confirm they still have P.O.W.s they have to go and pay to have them released, so, he wants to prove they don't. So he... gets some super soldier to, in a top-secret mission head in and see if they do, planning to cover it up if so. Uh... this plan makes absolutely no sense. You know what would accomplish the same thing? Doing absolutely nothing whatsoever. If you really want, you can take your own pictures of an empty cage or something. This is just totally non-sensical though.
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So anyway, Rambo gets captured, and held until an Evil Russian Commander can come by and interrogate him. Specifically, held in a pit of mud and leeches. They bring him to the same camp whose security he just compromised, and Contact Girl does what he was supposed to have done in the first place. Motorcycle prostitute disguise is go! It's not funny when it isn't Rambo doing it though. Anyway, they strap him to a mattress skeleton and electrocute him some, and this scene in particular is just really really weird to be watching right after I just watched Spoony's review of Strike Commando, which is a blatant rip-off of this movie. So it's like I saw the bad low budget version, and now I'm watching the cleaned up remake. Anyway, he isn't responding to torture, so they torture the random P.O.W. he was attempting to rescue instead. This works of course, because this is a movie, and that always works in movies. Here though it really doesn't make any sense though. This isn't some innocent bystander here. This is another soldier, who presumably had the exact same training he did, and pretty much ended up here for the same basic reasons. Plus, what the heck are you trying to accomplish here anyway? You already know all the details of his mission here. I guess they want to confirm that he actually was on a mission so they can rub the U.S.'s nose in it how they fail at spying or something.
In any case, eventually Rambo gets bored with being tortured I guess, kills everyone in the room with weirdly little effort, and kinda casually strolls out of the camp with everyone shooting at him. Contact Girl comes along, having just met up with him, but P.O.W. guy is... apparently left behind to be killed or at the very least tortured some more. Sucks to be him. Apparently, it's now time to get to the rescue chopper again... and uh... why exactly is there one of those now? Wasn't the guy in charge evil and leaving him to die? Oh, apparently they didn't send another and they have to go on foot. Also, "Maybe need this?" What the heck Contact Girl! You can't drop "you" like that! Your terrible English is totally inconsistent here! Anyway, she's all I totally wanna be your girlfriend, and he's all, sure, and then some guys with machineguns totally mow her down. So yeah, anyone who made the earlier bet that there'd be some big scene of him having to rescue her is wrong. Anyway, Rambo gets into Serious Mode by putting on a fresh headband, and also some weird green tooth necklace? I guess that was hers. So yeah, it's a now it's personal sorta situation and he's going to kill all these random commies one by one, like the killer in a bad slasher movie. Except way quicker because we're short on time. Oh, and I mean that too, he just keeps leaping out from behind people and stabbing them or breaking necks or whatnot. It's kinda like a way way way less interesting version of the whole spike trap woods chase scene from the first movie. Oh, and somehow he got his bow back too. Also, that kill there? That was really weird. He somehow grabbed some guy with a viney tentacle. That one was weirder. He just kinda burst out of a muddy wall.
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So... lots more chasing, he apparently runs right through an army base/small town sorta thing at one point for the heck of it, oh, here's another odd kill. OK, he cuts a rooster and ties a leaking gas can to it, then lets it loose in some tall grass. So... the pursuing army dudes (Viet Kong, already killed the Russians) follow a trail of blood through the tall grass for a while, eventually see some weirdness, and then explode. Speaking of exploding, after this it's finally time to pull the exploding arrows out and just randomly blow a whole bunch of stuff up. Oh, and now here's the scene from UHF where someone with a very clear shot at him while he's just standing there misses him an absurd number of times, even after ditching the machine gun for a nice steady pistol, before being shot with an exploding arrow right in the chest. Then a Russian helicopter flies in and drops an exploding barrel on him, or tries to at least. Dude. There's exploding barrels in real life? I thought those were totally just a weirdly artificial videogame thing. Anyway, that fails because he dives in the water, so they bring the chopper down to shoot at the water like crazy. This allows Rambo to leap out of the water, pull the dude out of the helicopter, and jump inside. Uh... OK, you didn't really have to get THAT low for this sorta thing guys. So yeah, he kills the other two dudes in the helicopter, and flies it back to the camp to rescue Stanley Spudowski. Also, it's got rocket launchers, so he gets to blow up all kinds of stuff along the way! What fun! Now this is really turning into the crazy explosion filled movie it's supposed to be! Oh, and yes, the exposions are accompanied now and then by "AAAAAAAUUUUGH! Oh, and now it's time to land, grab the giant machinegun conveniently strapped to the side of the chopper and run around gunning down everyone in sight. We are just some crazy spin jumps away from Live Action Contra here. So anyway, yeah, this time he actually rescues all the P.O.W.s. Incidentally, since everyone kinda knew he was tough enough to do this to begin with, wouldn't it have worked for him just to have done this to begin with? No need for weird arbitrary coverups, no having to negotiate hostage releases... Oh but we aren't done yet! One last russian dude, with a bigger, rocket launchinger helicopter is in pursuit! So... there's a fairly confusing fight scene honestly, Rambo et al. go down and play dead, before, surprise! Jumping up and firing a rocket launcher through the conveniently sized hole in their own windshield. Turns out their helicopter still works even, it's just a little wobbley and smoking. STAGE CLEAR! Kills: 97% P.O.W.s rescued: 5 Time bonus: 2:17 Overall score: 192800 Ranking: Commando
So they head back to base, make a very wobbly landing with a cheering crowd, and Rambo takes his big ol' machinegun off to go kill the REAL enemy in this movie, the uh... room full of computers. I know, you'd figure the evil guy in charge, right? But no, he just unloads a whole belt of ammo shooting up a room full of dated mainframes. THEN he goes to give the jerk a very stern talking to and demand he find and rescue any other P.O.W.s he's aware of, or else. Gee, maybe that would be easier if you hadn't just shot his computer room to hell. When you put a bullet hole in a punch card, that's like adding an extra punch! You just turned a 5 into a 13! Everything is ruined! Anyway, then he goes off to the Colonel and tells him that all Vietnam vets want is for people to love them. Seriously. That's what he says. Then we get ANOTHER inappropriately sappy ending theme song. About peace and mourning and patriotism. Because yeah, that's totally the message this movie has. 100 exploded communists, peace and love everybody! So anyway, stupid movie? Yeah. Full of plot holes? Yeah. If you're going to do a mindlessly violent action movie though, it's a pretty darn good template. Just needs a giant alien monster at the end or something. The computer room was a really lame final boss.
