Rambo (Sylvester Stallone “Rocky”, “First Blood”) is back and it’s a disappointment. This isn’t what I wanted, I wanted a prequel in the form of a serious war movie showing Rambo and his unit during the Vietnam War. Instead of that, we get a sequel that doesn’t do anything new.

After being imprisoned after the events of the original “First Blood”, Rambo is given the opportunity to be free. However, it requires him to go back to Vietnam to rescue a group of American soldiers, who still being held captive by the authorities there. In order to achieve his objective, Rambo must disobey orders and fight the Vietnamese, Russians and Americans presented in the forms of soldiers, pirates and bureaucrats.

Sylvester Stallone of course returns as the severely disturbed super soldier. He does a good job and his performance is the best part of the movie by far. I wasn’t too keen on the villains in the first film as they lacked a good motive but here, they are so uncharismatic anyway that you’ll find they will quickly fade from your memory. Rambo’s old superior officer, Trautman, returns but he doesn’t do anything even when someone points a gun at him. I mean it’s hard to believe he trained Rambo if this is how he acts.

“Rambo: First Blood Part II” has a bit more action than the first movie but that only means it becomes like lots of other action films with a high body count and no real brains. The only scene that really captures the great tactical element of the original is a segment that is nothing but a duplicate of a sequence in “First Blood”. “Part II” doesn’t do any favours for Rambo and makes him just another action hero and that’s a shame because there are moments where the film works pretty well.