Rambo II : La Mission

When I was a kid and I watched the first Rambo and this one, I thought the order was wrong. Here Rambo goes to war in the first one he came back from one. Well I was clueless what can I say. It's also not like I saw any social commentary or understood what PTSD is. I know I probably was too young to have watched them, but that I also did not know at the time.

Having rewatched the first three again recently, I remembered them and my memory got freshened up on a lot of things too. The action is pretty stellar in this one and we get some recognizable characters back and some new ones added. Now the main twist is very predictable, but the movie still works despite that. I remember the horror I felt when the slugs scene came up. But I learned about the salt "trick" too - not that I got a chance to use it (thankfully).

Sylvester Stallone has one of the most recognizable faces in the world for a reason; this genius has created two pop culture Icons Rocky and Rambo. Anywhere, in the world these two characters will be reconized. Stallone has many detractors, but his vision, writing, and acting out these characters has made him rich and sucessful in a highly competitive industry. Before Rambo, his sequel to First Blood, Stallone was just a star like Gene Hackmen, but this movie created a mega star. As part of gen x I love this film, it is a prototype for many action films that followed. The story brings out raw emotions, tension, and adrenaline. The viewer relates with John Rambo his pain, and how the government lies. The action takes the viewer on a incredible ride. I love the battlecry he gives out when he does a chopper assault on the bad guys, and the explosive arrow that smashes his adversary, along with the machine gunning of the computer system at the base. The camera angles, expressions, and physical acting is perfectly done. You leave the picture feeling good, and that is what movie escapism should be. Stallone, who is ridiculed, along with Arnold for his physical acting, can with this ability create a great stage presence. This emotion he creates with his body is done by, how he walks, flexs his arm etc. Could Robert De Niro done this film, maybe(ie Cape Fear) Tom Cruise no way, Val Kilmer No. This film is what an action film should be, I've seen very few lines for an Action movie as long as this one. PS the speech at the end gave the spirit of what the film was about.

Sylvester Stallone returns to the silver screen in this second chapter of the Rambo trilogy. This time, he is released from prison under the condition that he return to the Viet Nam area to take pictures of suspected camps where American POW's are being held. He has to deal with having orders not to use deadly force and then having to dis-obey those very same orders or be killed. He has a new antagonist in the form of a Washington Bureaucrat named Murdoch who leads this fact finding mission. He soon realizes that no one can be trusted and even his former mentor Colonel Troutman (well portrayed by Richard Crenna) is in no position to assist him. What follows is battle after battle with Asian as well as Russian troops leading to an exciting climax where he confronts the REAL enemy. Add this one to your shelf of DVD's in the action section. This is a well directed and excellent film!

This is one of the most exciting movies I have ever seen. When Rambo is sent to Vietnam to take photographic evidence of American prisoners of war who broke their neck fighting for their country, nobody would think that it is a woman the person who is going to be his partner during his Herculean-task.

Actually, Julia Nickson plays a woman whose family had always worked together with the Americans in the fight for liberate South-East Asia from communist imperialism. She is the most important character in the movie apart from Rambo, and deserves all respect for the fantastic job she does for freedom.

All the action in this movie is very good and Rambo's final quotes will let you speechless. And I understood what is heroism just watching Rambo's attitude on behalf of his fellow soldiers who were brutally tortured by the North Vietnamese communist regime.

Perhaps at US public opinion the war was lost, but in the battlefield no doubt Americans won overwhelmingly. History will honor the sacrifice of thousands of heroic American youngsters in that war against communist imperialist oppression.

This is a must-see movie.

Although done in the way of a mindless action film, this movie is steeped more in reality than you might think. It's true that there are hundreds of leftover POW's still alive in Vietnam. Many of them however have been moved over to Laos, Cambodia, North Korea, and the former Soviet Union. In the early eighties, Ronald Reagan tried to establish two rescue missions but stopped them at the last minute because their rescue would bring up a secret war the U.S. fought in Laos in the late sixties and early seventies. Many U.S. MIA's/POW's are from this secret war that no one was supposed to know about. Anyway, rather than try rescuing them, they felt that by "liquidating the merchandise" i.e. killing the POW's, the U.S. government could avoid embarrassment and let the pain of Vietnam die off. In fact, Vietnam did offer a number of live POW's to Reagan his first week of office for $ 4 billion dollars but they rejected this offer and continue to claim there are no more live POW's there, even though they have been tracking them by satellite for decades. What makes Rambo so disturbing is, this movie made $ 150 million at the box office, and Reagan even referenced it in a speech he gave once, yet no one in the media reports on the topic anymore. They instead look at it like they do the movie, simply a fantasy.