‎Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) directed by George P. Cosmatos • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd

Rambo: First Blood Part II

1985 Directed by George P. Cosmatos

What most people call hell, he calls home.

John Rambo is released from prison by the government for a top-secret covert mission to the last place on Earth he'd want to return - the jungles of Vietnam.

Sylvester Stallone Richard Crenna Charles Napier Steven Berkoff Julia Nickson George Cheung Andy Wood William Ghent Voyo Goric Dana Lee Martin Kove Baoan Coleman Steve Williams Don Collins Christopher Grant Alain Hocquenghem William Rothlein Tony Munafo Tom Gehrke

96 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Obistrike ★★★★ 1

To celebrate the birth of our beautiful daughter, I watched Rambo 2 (with headphones on). It's been a really great day!
Review by SuspirianKnight ★★★★ 2

Coca Cola is featured more in First Blood Part II than Rambo’s infamous knife, so have a Coke and a smile.

I love this one. My girlfriend thinks it’s cheesy because we see a wall of mud, then eyelids open and bam! Mudbo. And I turn into PG Walter Sobchak and start saying “do you see what happens? This is what happens when you find a stranger in the alps!” All because John J. got fucked over.
Review by Geoff T ★★★½

Geoff T's Rambo Marathon #2
Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)

So how do you make a follow-up to a solid post-Vietnam drama? Screw it, just have Rambo obliterate everything in his path.

This is the kind of movie that defines action films of the 80s, overly violent, patriotic and just plain explosive. I'm going to go out on a limb and say I enjoyed this a little more the the original. The first is clearly the far better movie, but this one as a whole just seems like more fun, as admittedly absurd it can get at times.

Set a few years after First Blood, Rambo is imprisoned at a penitentiary after the damage he did to the town…
Review by Travis Lytle ★★★★ 2

A stoic Sylvester Stallone blasts his way through the wilds of Vietnam in George P. Cosmatos' "Rambo: First Blood Part II," a solid action epic whose weaker elements are pushed aside by a straightforward, exhilarating spirit. Reprising his character, John Rambo, Stallone is the best thing about this "First Blood" sequel that plays as both an earnest apology to wronged American servicepeople and Reagan-era gunz-a-blazin' bullet-fest. The former theme is where the narrative takes shape as the film's story, circling an investigation by Rambo into troops missing in action, is steeped in skewering the bureaucracy behind the Vietnam conflict. The latter idea shapes the film as the action epic it is. Though dusted with unavoidable dubiousness in the form of the occasional flimsy performance and set-up, "Rambo: First Blood Part II" stands as a big, bold, and appealing action spectacular.
Review by CinemaClown ★★★

The second instalment in the Rambo film franchise, Rambo: First Blood Part II may lack the intricate themes of the original that turned it into an instant classic right away but certainly goes big with its action set pieces by packing in more explosions & body counts and takes the "one man army" approach a tad too far.

First Blood Part II continues the story of John Rambo and picks up from where it signed off in the previous chapter. The plot finds Rambo released from prison for a top-secret mission that requires him to return to Vietnam in order to document the possible existence of POWs but he soon finds out the real motive behind this covert operation.

Directed by…
Review by Allison M. ★★★ 3

Scavenger Hunt #36-March 2018
Task #3 Watch a movie that won the Golden Raspberry for Worst Picture.

I was trying to figure out how to rate this:
-really bad?
-bad?
-semi-ok?

I opted for semi-ok. After all, this installment of Rambo explores the themes of the U.S. government bombing their own people and lying through their teeth about it. That has to count for something. Then Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) talks about how his knife is good luck... and he's not joking folks. The serrated knife actually comes into play. We are not left disappointed. His younger brother (Frank Stallone) even sings a standard sounding pop song for the end credits. It was called “Peace in Our Life” but it should…

Recent reviews

Review by Jasperhart ★★★

I... guess the message is the same as the first one? It just approaches it in that much more digestible way of “bureaucrats are snivelling bastards and our fighting boys are best especially Rambo who has managed to forget his entire ptsd despite literally being dropped back into Vietnam”. Also the end credit song is jokes.
Review by SuspirianKnight ★★★★ 2

Coca Cola is featured more in First Blood Part II than Rambo’s infamous knife, so have a Coke and a smile.

I love this one. My girlfriend thinks it’s cheesy because we see a wall of mud, then eyelids open and bam! Mudbo. And I turn into PG Walter Sobchak and start saying “do you see what happens? This is what happens when you find a stranger in the alps!” All because John J. got fucked over.
Review by James Christopher Lawrence ★★★½ 1

Does have a Frank Stallone song during the closing credits.
Review by Machine11 ★★★★½

"I want.. what they want... and what every guy who came over here and split his guts and gave it everything he had wants... for our country to love us, as much, as we love it. That's what I want"
The feeling shared by so many, known by so few at the time. Best Rambo film of the lot
Review by Dan Owen ★★★

Condemned as a terrible follow-up by contemporaneous critics, this sequel from Greco-Italian director George P. Cosmatos (Of Unknown Origin) is where Rambo became a full-blown cultural icon. First Blood made a small fortune at the box office, sure, but it was the movie’s continuing popularity on VHS that guaranteed this louder and prouder sequel—written by none other than an up-and-coming James Cameron (who was about to hit the big-time himself as writer-director of The Terminator, released five months later).

It feels like Cameron approached this sequel in a similar way to Aliens (1986), which likewise continued a cerebral movie with a crowd-pleasing exaggeration of what audiences loved about it (i.e. H.R Giger’s deadly xenomorph and Stallone butchering men with a…
Review by Rachel Audrey ★★★½

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

"You not expect a woman, no?"

How this won four Razzies I will never understand. First Blood Part II—though not without its own flaws—manages to alleviate the missteps of its more critically acclaimed predecessor and, in some ways, stands stronger, or at the very least, more emblematic.

Co Bao (Julia Nickson) is the real highlight here, arguably the true protagonist; Rambo's savior from an existential hell. Were the romance given more time to bloom, and Co Bao allowed to live, I'd dare consider this the better film.
Review by BrodiesFilmkritiken ★★★

Und ab hier geht's bergab: war der erste Film noch ein ernstzunehmendes Drama ist der zweite Teil nichts weiter als ein krachender Actionfilm ohne viel Sinn und Verstand. Rambo wird hier zu einem simplen Pappkamerad reduziert der mit stoischer Mine und dicker Wumme durch den Dschungel zieht und alles wegballert dass sich ihm in den Weg stellt. Klar stellt der Actionanteil für Fans eine große Freude dar, es ist alles handwerklich perfekt inszeniert und für Spannung ist durchaus auch gesorgt - aber der Film stößt ab, zum einen eben weil mit der Figur durchaus mehr drin gewesen wäre, zum anderen eben weil er unmenschlich brutal ist. Fans hats aber nicht gestört.

Fazit: Brutales Actionepos mit meterhohen Leichenbergen - handwerklich gut und mit Stallone in einer seiner besten Rollen!
Review by Bill Chambers ★★★½

Rambo kisses a girl in this one.
Review by Manguy ★½

This is probably the best worst sequel to a great movie (so Troll 2 doesn't count). It's a terrible follow-up to First Blood, even as a movie it's pretty bad, but it gets to "so bad it's good" levels at times, especially with the dialogue and 'romance' between Rambo and Ko. The action is entertaining, but I don't like that they turned Rambo from a sympathetic character to a generic action hero who can shoot nearly triple his kill count in the whole Vietnam War. His PTSD is also gone so he has little to no reaction to things that would trigger him which adds to Stallone's disappointing, wooden performance, it sounds like he just doesn't care.

It's enjoyable enough, but doesn't have much reason to exist and just shits on a great movie.