Rambo: First Blood Part II sends its hero back to the one place he never wanted to see again. The 1985 sequel to First Blood pulls John Rambo out of a penal labor facility and drops him into the jungles of Vietnam on a mission the government has no intention of letting him finish.
Sylvester Stallone returns as the Green Beret veteran, and he co-wrote the screenplay with James Cameron from a story by Kevin Jarre. George P. Cosmatos directed. The film runs 96 minutes and was released by Tri-Star Pictures on May 22, 1985.
The setup is a bureaucratic deal. Colonel Sam Trautman, played again by Richard Crenna, tells Rambo that reports of missing prisoners of war have put the government under pressure. A solo infiltration mission has been approved to confirm those reports. Rambo agrees to go in exchange for a presidential pardon.
Trailer, via StudiocanalUK.
Marshall Murdock and the Mission He Never Meant to Honor
In Thailand, Rambo and Trautman meet helicopter pilot Michael Ericson, his partner Lifer, and Marshall Roger Murdock, the bureaucrat running the operation. Murdock’s orders are narrow: photograph a suspected POW camp, do not engage enemy personnel, do not attempt a rescue.
Rambo trusts Trautman. He does not trust Murdock, and the film treats that suspicion as the only clear-eyed judgment anyone in the room has. The mission is not a rescue. It is public relations with a parachute.
The aerial insertion goes wrong immediately. Rambo’s parachute gets caught, and he cuts himself free, jettisoning most of his gear. He lands with knives and a bow and arrow. That is the whole arsenal.
Co Bao, the River Pirates, and the Betrayal Upstream
Rambo’s contact is Co Bao, a Vietnamese intelligence agent played by Julia Nickson. She arranges for local river pirates to take them upriver.
Rambo reaches the camp, commanded by Captain Vinh and Lieutenant Tay. He confirms the POWs are there. Then he disobeys orders and frees one of them, Banks.
The withdrawal collapses. The river pirates betray them as a Vietnamese gunboat closes in. Rambo kills the pirates and disables the gunboat with an RPG. He and Banks separate from Co before reaching the extraction point.
Under mortar attack, Trautman spots them from a rescue helicopter carrying Ericson and Lifer. Trautman tells Murdock. What follows is the film’s actual argument: the government that sent Rambo in leaves him behind rather than admit what he found.
What the Film Has Beyond Its Reputation
Rambo: First Blood Part II became a global blockbuster. It grossed an estimated $150 million in the United States, finishing as the second highest-grossing film at the domestic box office and the third highest-grossing film worldwide in 1985.
It inspired countless rip-offs, parodies, video games, and imitations. Entertainment Weekly ranked it number 23 on its 2009 list of “The Best Rock-’em, Sock-’em Movies of the Past 25 Years.”
The cast around Stallone does specific work:
- Richard Crenna as Col. Samuel Trautman, the one authority figure Rambo still answers to
- Charles Napier as Marshall Murdock, the bureaucrat who sends him in and cuts him loose
- Steven Berkoff as Lt. Col. Podovsky
- Julia Nickson as Co Bao, the contact who gets him upriver
- Martin Kove as Ericson, the pilot
The tagline promises “No man, no law, no war can stop him.” The film means it literally, and that is where the trouble starts.
A Machine With No Brakes
The first film was about a man the country had already broken. This one is about a man the country uses and then discards, which is a sharper idea than the movie knows what to do with.
What it does instead is escalate. Rambo starts with a bow and arrow and ends as a one-man army, and the movie never pauses to notice that it has traded a character for a body count. The POW/MIA premise gives the violence a cause. It does not give it a cost.
Co Bao is the clearest casualty of that trade. She is the only person in Vietnam who helps Rambo without an angle, and the film spends her to make him angry. Nickson plays the part straight. The script gives her almost nothing to play.
Crenna remains the best thing in the movie. Trautman is the only figure who seems to understand that Rambo is a weapon someone else loaded, and Crenna lets that knowledge sit quietly behind his eyes. Napier’s Murdock is a suit with a smirk, and the film hates him exactly as much as it needs to.
The Score
Rambo: First Blood Part II is efficient, loud, and built to be imitated, which it was. As a piece of action construction it works. As a sequel to First Blood it abandons the thing that made the first film matter: a soldier who was already the victim before he ever picked up a weapon.
The $150 million gross and the endless imitations are evidence of impact, not quality. A movie can be a blockbuster and still be a blunt instrument. This one is both.
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