Just seen this film for the first time, and right off, I can see where the cartoon got it from. The suiting up sequence before he boards the helicopter, the fiery letters in the opening credits - it’s all here.
It recently sprang to mind that a few times when I was little, my mother addressed me as Rambo. I didn’t have a clue what the name was all about, or who the character was, but from her meaning it definitely sounded like some kind of soldier. It’s a very distant memory, and amusing that it pops up now.
Certainly I can see how this movie is the big iconic one - a sequel yet not at all reliant on anything from the original First Blood movie. It’s “a more conventional action thriller”, very intense, but not gratuitously gory at any point.
I think I prefer this one to the first one because the situation is better defined. The first one is just a manhunt that springs out of nowhere, with the cops just shoving Rambo around a bit for their own sadistic fun and then wondering why the loose cannon goes off like that when it was obvious to anyone with half a brain. Here Rambo is on a specific mission - but is it the mission that they said it was at the start? A question that reminds me of Where Eagles Dare, which we covered here a couple of years ago.
You could tell early on that Murdock was a wrongun. He was played brilliantly by Charles Napier, who guested in a couple of Star Trek episodes, “The Way To Eden” from the original series (possibly the worst episode ever!), and “Little Green Men” from DS9 in which he played a cigar-shewing general not dissimilar to Murdock actually.
Stallone is Stallone as per usual. Richard Crenna is also pretty much the same as Trautman. OK, yes it might have been nice for him to get his hands dirty later on after Murdock confined him, but it wasn’t really that necessary, as Rambo had an ace up his sleeve - or in his bandana rather as he was topless! When he arrived back at base, saying on the radio that he had American POWs, the entire camp realised that they had been following the wrong leader all movie, and turn against Murdock! The look of pride on Trautman’s face as Rambo lands the helicopter is spot-on. And then at the end when Rambo confronts Murdock, you’re half expecting him to kill the bastard, but in the end he just stabs the knife into the desk and leaves him with a threat - that is also very much inspired by Star Trek.
Pretty good overall.
