Blog 11-RR

"Rambo 2" is a movie about John Rambo, a Vietnam veteran who is asked to go back to Vietnam and document by photograph and POW's that are left overseas. The movie is narrated through Rambo, whose point of view is that America has not supported their veterans properly and who has distrust for the government. Rambo is told by Murdock and the Colonel not to save the POW's, but just document their existance. He finds POW's, tries to rescue one, and Murdock aborts the mission, leaving Rambo stranded, again confirming the mistreatment of veterans by the government.

This movie was a bit unrealistic in that it is very improbable that one man could take down a whole base of soldiers, plus Russian soldiers, by himself. I think that this movie was made mainly for entertainment purposes, but it did have many subliminal messages throughout the film that fit with the time. One example was the Russian involvement with the north Vietnamese troops. This film was made in the 1980s, during the height of the Cold War, which helps with the appeal of the Russian troops being the "bad guys". Also, when the Colonel and Murdock get into a yelling match with each other, a lot of the sentiment that veterans felt after the Vietnam war came out, including that it was all about money and that the governnment, was in essence, deceiving the people of America.

There were major political undertones in this film, some including the ones listed above. The main political undertone was Rambo's distrust of the government establishment itself for what it had done to his life, and what had happened again while he went to Vietnam the second time to document the POWs. Mainly, this movie shows how veterans felt about how the American people and the government treated them once they returned home from the Vietnam War. They felt betrayed by their own people, and alone.