First Blood Part II is not a great sequel, in fact a lot of it feels very average with little life in the scenes, Stallone does his usual thing of not saying a lot and blowing up a lot with just about every weapon conceived by mankind and the action scenes in which that happen are either really boring or border on being ridiculous.
But the film's biggest problem is that it has no heart to it, the first Rambo film had the big action scenes and Stallone doing his thing but it also had a real heart to it in regards to the Rambo character in that he was just drifting through the US trying to find any survivors of his unit besides him and coming to terms with not only being the last of an elite group of soldier but also the treatment he received from his fellow countrymen for his service which culminated beautifully in that film's final scenes.
This time around he's just another run of the mill action man with a buff body creaming armies left, right and centre without so much as getting a scratch or sneezy nose and boy oh boy do you get bored with that very quickly.
But there were a couple of bright spots, first was the score by the late Jerry Goldsmith which highlighted when it used the underscore of "It's a Long Road" from the first film and the performances by Richard Crenna and Charles Napier, the two men play off each other very well and the scenes between them are easily the highlight of the film, it makes me sad somewhat that both men are no longer with us as they were good character actors.
So all in all, First Blood Part II is a very average follow up to a great original which still stands up today as a great action film, rent that film and avoid the other 3 films in the series as they're nowhere near as good, 1.5 out of 5.
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