Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)

Let me be straight with you: if you walk into Rambo: First Blood Part II expecting anything close to what made the original so compelling, you're going to be disappointed. And that disappointment is the film's own fault, because it had something genuinely special to build on and chose, quite deliberately, to throw it away.

I wrote about First Blood (1982) and came away genuinely moved by it. That film understood John Rambo as a broken man, a Vietnam veteran chewed up and spat out by the country he'd served, wrestling with trauma in a world that didn't want to hear about it. It was angry, it was raw, and Sylvester Stallone gave a performance that deserved far more credit than it ever received. So when the sequel arrived three years later, the question wasn't whether Rambo could survive another mission. It was whether the filmmakers would have anything real to say.

They didn't. Or rather, they decided they didn't want to.

What we get instead is essentially a feature-length action highlight reel. Stallone returns, visibly bigger and bulkier, and the transformation is telling. The haunted drifter is gone. In his place is an unstoppable, oiled-up, arrow-firing machine who tears through Vietnam with the kind of ease that would make even the most enthusiastic propaganda writer blush. The plot exists purely to hang action sequences on: go back, find POWs, fight Russians, get betrayed by suits in Washington, prevail anyway. You've seen the shape of it before, and you'll see it again.

And look, I'm not going to pretend there's nothing here. If you're in the mood for loud, daft, gloriously excessive 80s action, this delivers on that level. It's the kind of film where you can switch your brain off, let the explosions wash over you, and have a reasonably good time. Richard Crenna is still a pleasure as Colonel Trautman, bringing genuine warmth and authority to a script that barely deserves him. There are moments of pure, shameless entertainment buried in here.

But the cost of all that entertainment is everything that made the first film matter. The social commentary is gone. The PTSD is gone. The systemic critique of how America treats its veterans, that raw, uncomfortable nerve the original pressed so hard, has been replaced by jingoism dressed up as heroism. Rambo isn't a broken man any more. He's a symbol, a patriotic poster come to life, and that flattening of character is where the film loses me completely. The dialogue leans hard into one-liners, the emotional beats feel manufactured rather than earned, and by the time we get to the inevitable flag-waving finale, any pretence of depth has long since been abandoned.

It's a shame, because Stallone is capable of so much more when given material worth chewing on. I think about his work in Cop Land (1997), where he stripped everything back and delivered something genuinely affecting, and it's a reminder of what gets lost when spectacle swallows substance whole. The muscle and the myth take over, and the man underneath disappears.

This sits comfortably alongside something like Cobra (1986) in the 80s Stallone canon: enjoyable in the right mood, best consumed without high expectations, and not something you'd reach for if you wanted to make a case for him as a serious actor. Fine company, in other words, but not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Two and a half stars. Entertaining enough on its own terms, but hollow when you hold it next to what came before. Watch First Blood again instead. It still holds up beautifully. This one trades its predecessor's soul for a bigger body count, and that's a deal I'll never think was worth making.

Rating: ★★½  | Year: 1985  | Watched: 2025-11-16

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