Rambo Ranks — brian gill

Prior to this weekend’s release of Last Blood, there were only four Rambo movies. I say this because, while it is a scientific, provable fact thanks to IMDb, it feels like there are way more than four of these things. I thought I was alone in that feeling until recently when my co-host, Richard, made an off-hand comment about how he’d lost track of how many Rambos there are and how it had to be close to double digits at this point. Well, again, it’s not double digits, it’s just four but it doesn’t feel like four. My theory on why the Rambo Cinematic Universe feels so much larger than reality is part the longevity of this series (we’re at 37 years between the first installment and this, ostensibly the last) and part the omnipresence of the character culturally. The Rambo movies might not be that great (see below) but Rambo the character has overshadowed the movies he exists in tenfold and his cultural relevance, while obviously much lower than it was in the 80’s and 90’s, has persisted quite stubbornly. With Sylvester Stallone hanging up the headband (again, ostensibly; we’ll see) with this final chapter in the Rambo saga, I re-visited all ten four of the previous films in the series and ranked them below.

4. Rambo III, 1988
The end of the trilogy (which absolutely should have been titled Rambo First Blood Part III, you idiots) saw John Rambo pulled into the war in Afghanistan when he was required to go and save Colonel Samuel Trautman after a poorly conceived mission went haywire. There are times when this one works really well (all things considered) and times when Stallone’s notorious hubris is on full display in less-than-stellar fashion. In Stallone’s world, Rambo is personally responsible for the liberation of Afghanistan and I’m not exaggerating much. It also super-duper jumps the shark in the final ten minutes when Rambo and Colonel Trautman LITERALLY face down the Russian army by themselves.

3. Rambo First Blood Part II, 1985
First of all, not a good title. If we were going with my plan to call the third movie Rambo First Blood Part III then, sure, this title makes sense. Without that kicker, though? Terrible title. Secondly, I’m not 100% sure the plotting in Part II makes, like, ANY sense whatsoever. Rambo and Trautman go back into Vietnam to help a group of government-sanctioned mercenaries track down and rescue American POWs. But wait! Turns out the mercs don’t want to rescue the POWs because…uh…they’re somehow in on the continued incarceration of said POWs? I don’t know, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, and I was very distracted by the fact that all of the mercenaries look like other, more successful 80’s actors and I spent the whole time wondering if one guy was Dr. Johnny Fever from WKRP in Cincinnati (it was not him). John Rambo did rock the crap out of a bazooka, though, so this movie isn’t a complete loss.

2. Rambo, 2008
I remember thinking, “Wait, for real?” when this movie came out a decade back. In hindsight, it made complete and total sense to revisit our hero, we just weren’t yet in a climate where EVERY SINGLE MOVIE was prime for a reboot, remake, sequel, or prequel. Coming out of Rambo, I had two predominant thoughts: One, this wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be and two, boy, things sure have gotten a lot more violent in the 20 years since we last saw Rambo wrecking shop. YOWZA. Even still, this installment is actually solid enough save for a few instances of that legendary Stallone hubris once again raising its ugly head by exploring too many heavy themes and storylines that could’ve been streamlined and dumbed down a bit. You had me at “shoots a bunch of guys with arrows”, Sly, let’s just leave it at that.

1. Rambo First Blood, 1982
The rest of these films have been chasing the success of the first installment, which saw a PTSD-riddled John Rambo returning from Vietnam only to be rejected by the country that sent him off to war in the first place. When he’s hassled by a local sheriff…well, in the words of Ron Burgandy, things escalate quickly, and pretty soon Rambo is shooting dudes out of a helicopter. The films that followed, I think, get more of the credit for launching Rambo the character into his permanent place in the cultural zeitgeist but what sets First Blood apart, in my mind, is that it puts the story forward instead of just the man himself. Other Rambo movies think they have something to say (particularly the most recent reboot) but this one actually had something to say and pulls it off rather decently in the midst of Rambo going ham on an unlucky group of state troopers.