Metacritic reviews

If you accept that Rambo is not the same kind of movie as First Blood and watch it on its own merits, it’s a badass action movie.

In short, Rambo is very good at what it does, but what it does isn't always that good. [22 May 1985, p.1C]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

All in all, it's a pretty offensive movie, especially to the Americans who fought in Vietnam.

Cosmatos' constant device of setting up the audience, releasing the tension and then setting up again gives the movie a pacing that is all manipulation. [22 May 1985, p.D1]