Review by: Mathew Tschirgi (magus@mindspring.com) THE RAMBO TRILOGY consists of three movies:
1) FIRST BLOOD (1982) 2) RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II (1985) 3) RAMBO III (1988)
All of them star Sylvester Stallone as 'John J. Rambo' and Richard Crenna as his Green Beret Commanding Officer from Vietnam.
All of these movies are entertaining in their own little way. None of them are realistic in any sense, unless you believe that one man can jump down hundreds of feet into a waterfall, get shot in the face, trip, get extensive shock treatment, and still be alive. These movies don't feature Stallone's finest acting (for that I would advise you to see the first few ROCKY movies or OSCAR). The plots are laughable. Let's get on with it...
FIRST BLOOD begins with John J. Rambo trying to contact his war buddies from his platoon in Vietnam. All of them are dead; one even died from cancer after the war. Rambo, feeling depressed, takes a walk through a place which is either called Hope or Holiday Land (the sign he sees when he walks in says Holiday Land, but the town has signs like 'The Hope Inn'). A local police officer gives Rambo a ride to get out of town because he "doesn't want drifters in his town". Rambo gets pissed and begins walking towards a bridge and is arrested for vagrancy. He gets badly beaten in jail.
But, as one of the police officers puts it, Rambo is a "bad ass". He fights his way out of the guarded prison cell and boogies down to the nearest forested area to hide out from his pursuers. A former leading Officer in Vietnam who Rambo was familiar with tries to convince Rambo to come out peacefully. Rambo refuses and as a result lots of people die and buildings blow up for no real reason. The movie's scenes with Sylvester Stallone have a good combination of suspense and action. There is humor as well. For instance in one scene Rambo commandeers an army truck and tells the driver to keep on driving. The driver is looking crazy at Rambo. Rambo snaps back with "Don't look at me; look at the road. That's how accidents happen!!" The scenes without Rambo are slow and full of dialogue, which make up a third of the movie. The dialogue isn't really even very interesting, dragging down what should be an exciting film. FIRST BLOOD is entertaining enough to watch for the action bits... I give FIRST BLOOD ** 1/2 out of ****.
RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II has a pathetic excuse for a title. The plot involves Rambo being let go from jail to go to Cambodia to pick up POW's from Vietnam. They pick Rambo because he is expendable; Rambo defines the term as "It's like when you are being invited to a party but nobody really cares if you don't show up.". Along the way, Rambo links up with a Vietnamese chick who helps his cause. There is more violence and more explosions than in the first one.
The beginning of this movie is awful. It has nothing but Rambo being briefed about his mission for around 30 minutes. Full of pointless dialogue that makes you want to turn off the movie and return it for a refund at your local video rental store. But then when he begins to attack the Vietnamese, it gets rather entertaining. Rambo fights them with a gun, a bow and arrow, a bow and flaming arrow, and many other things. The funniest part in the movie is a totally over-the-top blastfest that has Rambo in a helicopter for 10 minutes blowing up everything to tiny bits. It is a scene that makes the whole movie worthwhile and reccomendable for that one scene alone. Amazing!! It also ends with a cheesy 'Let's Save Our Brothers' love theme that has nothing to do with the movie whatsoever during the closing credits. I give RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II *** out of **** for the incredible helicopter sequence and over-the-top violence. Just skip the first thirty minutes, if you can... :)
RAMBO III is when the series has gone to the ground. Our friend Rambo is now a monk beating the hell out of people to get money to support the monastery he builds in his free time. When asked to be sent to quell a Russian attack in a Middle Eastern country, Rambo refuses. When his Vietnam Officer from the previous two films gets captures, Rambo comes along for a major killing/blast fest spree.
The amount of killing and explosions are quite entertaining. Just the first HALF of the movie is boring dialogue again with little importance to the plot. Nobody watches a RAMBO movie expecting a story; give us violence damn it!! We want to watch people getting blown up as well as buildings being zapped. No more stupid talking sequences! I give RAMBO III ** out of **** only for its good action parts.
Review by: Mathew Tschirgi E-Mail me at magus@mindspring.com for any comments on this review...
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews