Rambo: First Blood Part II

Carolco Pictures | Release Date: May 22, 1985

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

47	METASCORE Mixed or average reviews based on 15 Critic Reviews

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

Nathan Rabin

It may be a dishonest, xenophobic, exploitative act of historical revisionism, but it's effective, and Jack Cardiff's cinematography lends Rambo's comic-book adventures an epic sweep. Read full review

Jack Kroll

What makes Stallone a figure to be reckoned with is that although these films can be looked at as sledgehammer mindlessness, they contain not only action, but a mystique of action. For all the blood and thunder, there's a strange stillness at the heart of Stallone. [27 May 1985, p.74]

Staff (Not Credited)

The body count is rising, Sly's pecs are blowing up, and Rambo himself is becoming more of a brand-name than a character, a mascot for masochism and murderous self-assertion. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

The charade on the screen, which is not pulled off, is to accept that the underdog Rambo character, albeit with the help of an attractive machine-gun wielding Vietnamese girl (Julia Nickson), can waste hordes of Vietcong and Red Army contingents enroute to hauling POWs to a Thai air base in a smoking Russian chopper with only a facial scar (from a branding iron-knifepoint) marring his tough figure. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

At best, Rambo: First Blood Part II is a crudely effective right-wing rabble-rouser, the artistic equivalent of carpet bombing -- you don't know whether to cheer or run for cover. At worst, it's a tribute to Sylvester Stallone, by Sylvester Stallone, starring Sylvester Stallone. [22 May 1985, p.F1]

EmpireIan Nathan

Here is a film fully xenophobic, abhorrent film, touting guileless version of military honour, but with Jack Cardiff’s furtive camerawork and some excellent editing, it sucks you in to its disturbing heroic sweep. Read full review

Michael Wilmington

Rambo is an inane sequel to a fairly good melodrama; another example of an attempt to repeat an earlier success that goes wildly out of scale. Read full review

Vincent Canby

To anyone who doesn't share the camera's adoration, this sort of behavior becomes so comic that Rambo turns into something of a camp classic. Read full review

Pauline Kael

Rambo is to the action film what Flashdance was to the musical, with one to-be-cherished difference: audiences are laughing at it.