REVIEW:
Rambo First Blood: Part 2 is okay. Like the first movie, you could see that there was real potential here that just wasn’t quite executed properly or followed through on. Of coarse the story and setting happen to be very different from the first film, and yet the results turn out to be similar.
The first movie was about a drifter in a town being chased out to the woods, where he took out everyone who came after him. It was good until the final act, which became a one on one match between Rambo and police chief Brian Denehy, on the town streets at night. As if no one else would have a problem with Rambo shooting up the streets from on a rooftop and killing the towns electricity.
The second movie definitely has a better and more creative premise. Rambo is in prison serving time for his actions in the first movie (a great continuation to show that the actions in the first film did have consequences.) He is recruited and given a pardon to be released by his former military commander (an actor who was also featured in the first film,) so long as he goes back to Vietnam to look for US captives that may or may not be bring held by the Vietnamese. His instructions are not to engage if he finds US captives, and instead just to take photos.
Turns out there are indeed US captives being held, and Rambo does engage the enemy to try to free them. And then things get really interesting. We learn that the whole mission was just to appease US citizens hi had concerns, by proving to them that there were no captives there. Since it turns out there actually are, Rambo is sacrificed by the government alongside the captives. And he has to make it out of the situation himself.
The corruption angle is the best part of this movie. And it isn’t followed through on. You watch the movie saying, “I can’t wait for Rambo to get back and put these guys, who left him there, in their place.” Only the movie doesn’t deliver on that. This should have been a film where the guest half was in Vietnam and the second half was about following the corruption to the top. Instead it is nearly all in Vietnam, leaving the end feeling very unfulfilling.