Just watched First Blood Part 2 again after a piece on Cinematical made me want to reevaluate it. I'd only seen it once and was pretty unimpressed. 1 and 3 I've always loved but 2? I just couldn't see it. The first and only time I saw it I thought it was awful. I should point out that living in the UK I've not had the chance to see the new one yet: what is with the bizarre decision to have a month between American and British releases of this film? I thought movie companies wanted to get rid of piracy, not give people a reason to do it?


So what of First Blood Part 2? I can safely say that I thought it pretty good. So good in fact that I'm at a loss as to what made me hate it in the first place. I know one of my problems with it was the female character who seemed a rather pointless addition to the plot (Rambo and his guide fall in love, she gets mowed down by bullets). This pointlessness perhaps infected the rest of the film for me. This time round though I think I actually worked out the point of this plot. It's very quickness was what puzzled me at first, it's kind of like they fall in love quickly (I have no problems with that) and, after sharing their first kiss, they go to move on and, while Rambo collects his knives and bow, she walks into the open and gets shot, telling him never to forget her with her dying breath. It seemed so utterly preposterous. However, watching it this time it occurs to me that she has to die, there is no where else to go. It is a very good example of the fantastical support of the relationship, both sides utterly missing the other, seeing only some version of the other that supports their own self. The woman sees in Rambo her opportunity to leave her (miserable) life behind and start anew in America. Rambo sees in her someone who loves him. The point is not just that Rambo misses the fact that she wants to use him to get to America (a point she makes explicit in their original conversation on the boat), but that she misses the fact that Rambo cannot be at home in America, that she has backed the wrong horse. As the end of the film makes clear, this is where Rambo feels at home. The only way to make this relationship work is for her to die.


The fantastical nature of this relationship is also highlighted by the lack of reference to it in the rest of the film. Once Rambo has buried her he washes his hands of her (almost literally, in that he rubs his hands through the dirt covering the grave, the purity of love being taken over by the dirtiness of the job at hand perhaps). He returns to his reality. Where previously I saw this as a failure, now I see it as consistency. Throughout the film I noticed similarities between Rambo and Jason Voorhees from The Friday the 13th films: they are both empty, automatons, their killing is a simple fact, unrelated to pathological motives. Thus Rambo continues as he was before, he does not go on killing to avenge the death of his beloved, he just goes on killing because that is what he does. Had he not forgotten about his love he would have been a less effective killing machine: emotion has no place in his killing. One can see here a certain similarity to Freddy vs Jason, in which Jason is absolutely ineffective in his work, he always allows someone to escape and raise the alarm before he finishes the job (of killing everyone in reach), absolutely at odds with previous versions of Jason. And the reason for this? Jason has been given character, he is no longer empty vessel.

Vietnam is Rambo's Crystal Lake. The place where he died and where he continues undead until America is ready to bury him ("I just want America to love us as much as we love it").