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Movies We Love: "Rambo: First Blood Part II"

1/27/08

To get fired up for the new "Rambo" film, my buddy Gordon "The Professional" Stokes and I watched "Rambo: First Blood Part II" at my apartment today...and, damn, I always forget what a classic this puppy is until I watch it uncut time and time again.

This is not to say that "Rambo: First Blood Part II" is a good movie.  No, actually, it's so incredibly light on script that to even give someone a screenwriting credit is kind of silly...unless that someone is James Cameron, who wrote this film while waiting for the budget to go through on "Aliens", having just finished "The Terminator."  (Yeah, THAT James Cameron.)  And, the acting is slipshod throughout; classic 80s one-liners ring true throughout this film, and that's only when our man John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) isn't killing Vietcong and Russian soldiers with guns, arrows, explosives, his trusty knife or his bare hands.

For a child of the 80s who grew up loving gratuitous action films, the second "First Blood" really fits the bill.  You get a plot that even now makes me laugh out loud: CORRECTLY-imprisoned Special Forces vet John Rambo is languishing in a shithole prison finishing out a long-term sentence when his old buddy/commanding officer Colonel Trautman (Richard Crenna, now deceased) shows up to offer him a deal that, if completed, will pardon Rambo's sentence.  That deal: to take pictures of what is probably an empty POW camp in 'Nam to satisfy the U.S. government's "attempt" to locate lost soldiers from a war that has been over for at least ten years.  Leading that mission is Murdoch (Charles Napier), a bureaucrat who probably never served in any armed forces operations; he gives Rambo a camera and a machine gun, and tells him to go off and take pictures of that camp.

Trouble ensues.

Gordon and I reveled in some of the lost glory of this movie; little things, like the fact that Martin Kove (as Ericson) gets one of those "And Martin Kove as Ericson" credits before the film gets going.  At first we couldn't remember why Kove could have been badass enough to deserve one of these credits, but upon reflection, I remembered why Kove was so famous in 1985, when this movie opened: his landmark role as John Kreese, head of the evil Cobra Kai karate syndicate, in the first "Karate Kid" film was the year before this opened.  Kove was hot back then.  His presence just screamed bad guy, and of course in "First Blood Part II" he is playing another bad guy.  Hilarious.

Or maybe it was the badass score that accompanies "First Blood Part II."  Or maybe the fact that the word "Rambo" has flames in it when it first appears onscreen.  Or the numerous scenes where Rambo has no shirt on and is shredded from head to toe.  Or the fact that the explosion and RPG sound effects are DIRECTLY ripped from "Red Dawn."  (Trust me on this last bit; just watch them back-to-back, and send me a check later.)  Little things.

"Rambo: First Blood Part II" is really a two-parter.  First, the adventure that leads Rambo from Thailand to 'Nam, to meet up with his contact, the lovely Co Bao (Julia Nickson), turns into a chance for the audience to learn more about Rambo, the man; this lasts exactly one scene, on a riverboat where Co Bao asks Rambo about his past, and he deflects all of the questions and then shows us HIS good luck charm--a big fucking knife.  Rambo goes through the motions--run through forest, check compass, kill smugglers, torch riverboat, rinse, repeat--before finding the camp, where he breaks out one of the POWs in that camp that was SUPPOSED to be empty.  The prisoner that Rambo breaks out during this first half of the film does "pitiful, groveling slave" better than anyone I can think of; he gets the tar kicked out of him later in the Rambo torture scene, and we couldn't decide if this was scripted or just actors deciding that it would be funnier to improvise that the guy gets his ass kicked while Rambo is sitting on the metal mattress frame.

Really, the first half of the film isn't very good, but it is required to set up the ridiculous second half of the film, which is the part that I watch no matter how many times I stumble upon it on regular television, because I fucking love it.  You know when the second half of the film starts because right after Rambo is getting the shock treatman by the crazy Russian commander (Steven Berkoff), he gets to call Murdoch on the radio, strangle-grip the microphone, and tell Murdoch that he's going to regret the decision to leave Rambo on that hilltop, just inches from being rescued by Ericson and his team.

Then, the movie just rolls downhill.  Rambo breaks out of the camp with the help of Co Bao, then the VERY NEXT MORNING, Co Bao quietly wonders what Rambo will do next.  After he tells her, she innocently asks Rambo for a favor:  "You take me with you?"  The fact that Co Bao's English is so hilariously perfectly broken becomes funnier when you see the behind-the-scenes extras for this movie; Nickson speaks perfect English and was raised in Hawaii, so you know that this is "acting" for her...but, I loved that in each scene, EXACTLY one word is misplaced each time.  "What mean expendable?"  or "You John Rambo?"  I will always wonder if this is how the script was written.  Of course, in the next moment, Co Bao kisses Rambo, they seem like beautiful life partners, and then Co Bao proceeds to get absolutely lit up by one of the Vietcong soldiers that has an incredible ability to track Rambo but not shoot straight...except for when he kills Co Bao.

"Rambo...you...not...forget...me?"  And then, she's dead.  I don't care how many times I watch it, the Co Bao death scene is always my favorite in the whole movie.  It does not feature a Scream to the Sky moment, which is the only thing that would have made it better...but, still.

This then gives us the powerhouse last twenty minutes, where Rambo goes on a killing spree (upping his 59 confirmed kills, as noted in Rambo's first meeting with Murdoch) by strapping on his trademark bandanna/sash, knife and bow, then sneakily taking out all manner of bad guys by strangulation or knife, hiding in the bushes or in a wall of mud.  When he gets to the village and lights up an entire countryside with his explosive arrow tips, Gordon and I both noted that Rambo only packed four of those tips when the mission started...and, he uses exactly four to take out the village (two) and the Vietcong trucks on the bridge (two).  But, then the film gets sneaky, by giving Rambo a mysterious fifth explosive arrow tip to kill the guy that killed Co Bao.  Sneaky, yes...but, consistent with 1980s action filmmaking--absolutely.

(Another random note: Rambo doesn't reload a single time during "First Blood Part II."  Granted, he kills a lot of people with his knife or his bow, but still, a lot of people die by gunfire and Rambo doesn't bother to reload once.)

Then, after being blown off of a rocky hilltop by a fuel-air bomb that shoots fire out of every orifice of the rock, Rambo takes control of a chopper and proceeds to level all of Vietnam, Cambodia, China, India and at least 75% of Nebraska with so many missiles and chain gun rounds that you will swear that there can't be anyone left to kill...until he lands the chopper to rescue the five or six POWs still at the camp, yanks the secondary gun off of its mount, and then lights up another dozen or so soldiers who weren't leveled by all of the rockets during the initial chopper run.  This leads us to the fairly dumb last chase scene, where the Hind helicopter piloted by the Russian commander shows up and fires hundreds of rounds at the Rambo chopper, only to nick it a few times to force smoke to billow out of its hull.  I still don't like the Rambo-fires-an-RPG-out-of-the-front-window ending, but it just sets up the guy orgy at the end, where Rambo goes after Murdoch back in Thailand, and he lights up those "computers" with a couple hundred rounds of gunfire from the secondary gun (which still hasn't been reloaded).

In fact, now that I think about it, that gun was fired a couple hundred times when the Russians use it to try and kill Rambo after the fuel-air bomb, then when Rambo goes in to get the POWs, then again when one of the POWs fires on the Hind chopper, then AGAIN when Rambo lights up the computers.  It EASILY squeezed off a thousand rounds throughout the course of the film, and was never reloaded.  Come on, now!

Rambo heads off into the sunset with his classic response to Trautman's "John, how will you live?"..."Day by day."  I still love that it seems like Rambo just walks off into a field, which can't really lead to anywhere, but there he goes, like he's got dinner plans in the jungle or something...classic.  It's too bad that "Rambo III" is so much worse than "II", but in terms of unintentional comedy, it might even be better than the second film.

 

Random Bellview Ratings, courtesy of Bell & Longer Community Trust:

• Having your fiancée in your home city:  Opening Weekend

• The peppercorn sirloin lunch at DC Chop House:  $9.50 Show

• Starring in a major motion picture for the first time...a major motion picture called "Midnight Meat Train":  Matinee

• Being John Edwards:  Rental

• Winning a share of the ACC men's hoops championship last year, and being in last place so far this year:  Hard Vice

 

justin@bellviewmovies.com