FILM REVIEW OF ''RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD, PART 2" (1985)

This explosive, high-octane sequel to "First Blood" (1982) qualifies as a brawny, action-adventure epic that finds our troubled, misunderstood hero pressed back into service to return to Vietnam and search for missing American P.O.W.s still reputed to be in captivity. Originally, director Ted Kotcheff's "First Blood" depicted the trials and tribulations that a former Green Beret encounters when he came home from Vietnam and clashes with an obnoxious, hard-headed sheriff. “First Blood” was derived from author David Morrell’s cult novel. Eventually, after a high body count, John J. Rambo surrenders to the authorities. Whereas "First Blood" emerged as largely tragic, "Rambo: First Blood, Part 2" is primarily heroic. The film generated some controversy during its release with its contentious subject matter about surviving American P.O.W.s left behind in Vietnam. Surprisingly, “Rambo: First Blood, Part 2” did not create the ‘free the American P.O.W.s. Ironically, the film that did create this niche genre was Kotcheff’s “Uncommon Value” that came out two years before “Rambo: First Blood, Part 2.” Nevertheless, this “Rambo” sequel attracted more attention. Moreover, this sequel is a lot more charismatic because the James Cameron & Sylvester Stallone screenplay based on a story by “Tombstone” scribe Kevin Jarre deals mostly in black and white with fewer gray areas of subtlety. Remember, this is a formulaic actioneer with titanic archetypical characters competing against each other. This time Rambo is the white-all-over good guy protagonist battling overwhelming odds amid fantastic looking scenery. He wields his trusty knife as well as throwing blades, RPGs, explosive-tipped arrows, and a helicopter. One scene sums up Rambo's ideas about weaponry. He states: "I thought the mind was the best weapon." The villains are appropriately treacherous and savage, especially British actor Steven Berkoff as the sadistic Soviet colonel who tortures our hero and George Cheung as the North Vietnamese officer who kills the heroine.

As "Rambo: First Blood, Part 2" opens, Rambo is shown in prison. At least, he assures his visitor and mentor Colonel Samuel Trautman (Richard Crenna of "Catlow") that he knows where he stands behind bars. Colonel Trautman makes him a proposition that will get him out of stir and back into the real world. After Rambo returns to Southeast Asia for the mission, he doesn't like the head honcho, Marshall Murdock (square-jawed Charles Napier of “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls”), because he doesn't trust him. Murdock claims that he served in Vietnam, but Rambo remembers Murdock's outfit being stationed somewhere else than where Murdock said. Before Rambo boards the jet that will take him to his destination, he informs Trautman that he is the only one whom he trusts. Afterwards, things go downhill rapidly. Rambo lugs an arsenal of sophisticated weapons aboard the jet. When he bails out, his parachute cord snags on the fuselage and jeopardizes his life. Consequently, our hero must resort to his razor-sharp knife to slash his way free of the plane. Of course, Rambo sacrifices that valuable, state-of-the-art arsenal, so he can survive and carry out the mission. Remember, he was instructed only to take photographs of the P.O.W.s. Incidentally, a similar plot complication occurred earlier in director Ted Kotcheff’s rescue-the-P.O.W.s-from Vietnam movie “Uncommon Valor” (1983) with Gene Hackman. The heroes lost their arsenal and had to improvise. At this point, Murdock wants to abort the mission, but Trautman won't let him. Meanwhile, Rambo makes his rendezvous after a little jaunt through the jungle and a brief encounter with a snake hanging from a tree. Rambo meets up with Co Bao (Julia Nickson of “Glitch!”) and she takes him to a river where pirates working for pay ferry them upriver. Since Rambo has lost his equipment, he cannot carry out his mission of photographing the P.O.W.s. Obstinately, Rambo slips into the camp and cuts loose one P.O.W. hanging from a rack. Our muscular protagonist hauls the P.O.W. off to the extraction point. Initially, Murdock is against flying in to retrieve Rambo, but Trautman puts up enough flak to convince him to go ahead with the flight. What happens next surprises not only Trautman but also Rambo. Murdock aborts the pick-up as Rambo and the P.O.W. stand on a hillside surrounded with Vietnamese soldiers. Predictably, Trautman is furious and calls both Ericson (Martin Kove of "The Karate Kid") and Banks (Andy Woods of "The Annihilators") "goddamned mercenaries."

The Vietnamese call in the Russians to interrogate Rambo. Little do they know that Rambo has been awarded a number of honors for his bravery, including two Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars, four Purple Hearts, Distinguished Service Cross, and a Congressional Medal of Honor. Lieutenant Colonel Podovsky (Steven Berkoff of “Octopussy”) confines our hero to a massive set of bed springs and fries him repeatedly with jolts of electricity. To make this scene and its torture more visually palatable for audiences, Cosmatos uses the venerable prison movie tactic of showing the lights dim with each successive jolt of electricity. Podovsky wants Rambo to confess his crimes, but Rambo has other ideas. Interestingly, Podovsky is the only one of Rambo’s adversaries who speaks in English. Meanwhile, Co Bao infiltrates the prison camp posing as a prostitute. Earlier, before Rambo and Co Bao sneaked into the camp, they saw a prostitute on a motor scooter enter the camp, so she uses this as her cover to get inside the barbed wire and rescue Rambo. Rambo warns Murdock that he is coming after him and escapes with Co Bao. Tragedy strikes not long afterward when Capt Vinh guns down Co Bao. Rambo wipes out the killers and buries Co Bao, but he wears her jade necklace. No sooner has Rambo avenged Co Bao’s death than Sergeant Yushin shows up in a Huey with a fire bomb that he drops at the water fall. The skies turn orange with the explosions that send Rambo diving into the water. The Huey descends to strafe the water and Rambo surprises them. He leaps up out of the water and jumps aboard the chopper. The chopper pilot panics and takes the helicopter back up. Sergeant Yuskin and Rambo slug it out, but Rambo manages to throw the Soviet non-com out of the chopper. The Soviet chopper pilot bails out before Rambo can lay his hands on him. Rambo commandeers the chopper and flies it back to the prison camp. He riddles the camp with gunfire and explosives and then lands to nelp get the six P.O.W.s out. A Soviet soldier laying dead in the high grass is really playing possum. He whips up his assault rifle and wounds one of the P.O.W.s before Rambo finishes him off.

James Cameron has gone on record and said that Stallone rewrote his screenplay and added the political brouhaha about the missing P.O.W.s. Reportedly, in the Cameron version, Rambo was incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital rather than a prison, Jerry Goldsmith's splendid orchestral score puts sizzle into the action. Interestingly enough, “Exorcist” sound effects editor Fred J. Brown received an Oscar nomination for Best Sound Effects Editing for “Rambo: First Blood, Part 2.” Director George P. Cosmatos doesn’t waste a second in this trim 94-minute exercise in larger-than-life violence, while “Conan the Destroyer” lenser Jack Cardiff captures all the gritty, muddy, visceral action with his widescreen cameras. Cosmatos states on the “Rambo 2” commentary track that he tried to inject as much movement as he could into the action and his crane shots exemplified this strategy. According to Cosmatos, a hurricane halted exterior production sequences, so he holed up in the motel with his cast and crew and shot many of the close-ups that pervade the film. Indeed, there are numerous close-ups and Cosmatos claims that these close-ups give the film its impact and strength. Editors Mark Goldblatt of “Terminator” and Mark Helfrich of “Predator” were two of the five editors that assembled the film and made copious use of Cosmatos’ inserts and close-up shots. The close-ups and insert shots are seamlessly integrated into the action and provide a sense of visual rhythm that makes the film more engaging than it might have been. “Rambo: First Blood, Part 2” features many iconic scenes for this type of movie. The helicopter attack on the prisoner-of-war camp is an exciting, adrenalin-laced sequence with multiple cameras covering the action as our hero strafes the camp and blows up guards. Later, Rambo’s helicopter squares off with the chief adversary who flies an imposing helicopter. The most incredible scene, however, in “Rambo: First Blood, Part 2” is the scene aboard a river ferry where our battle-scarred hero kisses an Asian girl. Rambo never locked lips with anybody in either “First Blood” or any of the other “Rambo” sequels. According to IMDB.COM, the body count is The total body count of the film is 67, 57 of whom Rambo kills.

FILM REVIEW OF ''FORREST GUMP" (1994)

“Back to the Future” trilogy director Robert Zemeckis surpassed himself in ways that he probably never imagined when he made “Forrest Gump.” Clocking in at two hours and forty minutes, this bittersweet PG-13 rated comedy about the epic misadventures of a slow-witted dolt from rural Alabama with a below-average I.Q. who lives through several milestone events in the 1960s received the Oscar for Best Picture of 1994. Not only did Zemeckis earn a Best Director Oscar, but also Tom Hanks’ took home the Academy statuette for Best Actor with his insightful, down-to-earth thesping. Forrest Gump is not the brightest bulb in the grid, but Hanks conveys this quality without ever stooping to histrionics. Above all, Hanks delivers a performance that has innocence and dignity intertwined. Moreover, “Forrest Gump” (**** out of ****)qualifies as Hanks’ best film.

“Forrest Gump” unfolds in Savannah, Georgia, as the eponymous character narrates the story of his life in a number of flashbacks. Indeed, two-thirds of the action takes place with Forrest on the bench relating his exploits to other people waiting for their bus. Zemeckis’ attention to details including the use of “People” magazine that the first woman is seen reading on the bench next to Forrest. The first time that we see young Forrest, he has just been fitted with a pair of leg braces at the doctor’s office while his mother (Sally Fields of “Norma Ray”) watches. She is determined to see to it that father-less Forrest gets to live as normal a life as possible. The school principal (Sam Anderson of “La Bamba”) fails to convince her that Forrest’s low I.Q. of 75 means that he should not attend regular school classes. Despite Forrest’s intellectual’s shortcomings, Mrs. Gump persuades the principal to permit Forrest to enroll in normal classes by having loud, noisy sex with him. The next time that we see young Forrest (newcomer Michael Humphreys) he hesitates about climbing aboard the school bus because he doesn’t know the bus driver and has been warned by his mother not to accept rides from strangers. The driver and Forrest introduce themselves to each other and he steps aboard because they are now no longer strangers. Forrest meets his first best friend Jenny Curran when she is the only student riding the bus who will let him sit beside her. Later, Forrest meets his second best friend on his way to military boot camp when Bubba makes room for him to sit beside him after others have turned him away.

Jenny and Forrest cultivate their friendship to the point that other students decide to attack Forrest. Initially, these obnoxious kids throw rocks at Forrest while he is walking home with Jenny. “Run, Forrest, run,” screams Jenny to our hero as the kids hurl more rocks and pursue him on their bicycles. Forrest takes off running and his braces disintegrate and he breaks into a loping stride that the kids on their bikes cannot match. The first chronological transition from young Forrest to Tom Hanks as Forrest occurs when the same kids—only older—attack Forrest and Jenny (Robin Wright of “The Princess Bride”) and try to run him down in their pick-up truck. Again, Forrest outruns them and scrambles through a practice scrimmage that Alabama football coach Bear Bryant (Sonny Shroyer of “Gator”) is holding. Forrest winds up in college, joins the football and scores touchdowns for the Alabama Crimson Tide. Forrest proves to be a sensation for the Tide and football is the first sport that he makes a name for himself. Later, he becomes a ping-pong ball champion in second-half of this witty spectacle. During his stay at Alabama, Forrest is exposed to the famous stance in the doorway by real-life Alabama governor George Wallace when the University of Alabama was integrated by African-American students. As one of the black students is entering the school, she drops a book and Forrest retrieves it on camera. Later, Forrest visits the White House, guzzles 15 Dr. Pepper sodas—his favorite soft drink--and gets to shake hands with the real President John F. Kennedy. When Kennedy asks him how he feels, Forrest tells him that he has to pee.

Meanwhile, Jenny has grown up, left her abusive father to live with another person, and ends up in an all-girls’ school. Forrest shows up and beats up Jenny’s date because he thinks that the guy is getting rough with her. Jenny gives Forrest his first sexual experience. She cups his hand over her breast and he blows a gasket while Jenny’s roommate—apparently asleep—listens in horror as Forrest admits that he has messed up the roommate’s bathrobe. Jenny informs Forrest that she wants to become a folk singer like her idol Joan Baez. Forrest joins the U.S. Army and takes a furlough to Memphis, Tennessee, to see Jenny perform folk songs on stage. Forrest knows that Jenny got expelled from her college for posing nude in a ‘Girls of the South’ issue of Playboy magazine, but he isn’t prepared for what he sees when she performs in the nude singing a Bob Dylan song. When a spectator heckles Jenny, Forrest comes to her rescue.

In the military, Forrest meets his second best friend, Private Benjamin Buford 'Bubba' Blue (Mykelti Williamson of “Waiting to Exhale”) and Bubba regales Forrest throughout boot camp with stories about his own life and the part that shrimp has played in it. Indeed, shrimp is the food is mentioned frequently than any other kind of food in "Forrest Gump.” Bubba and Forrest are shipped off to Vietnam where they learn not to salute their commanding officer, Lieutenant Dan Taylor (Gary Sinise of “Of Mice and Men”), because he tells them that the Viet Cong will shoot him. The Viet Cong surprise Lt. Dan and his platoon during an offensive and confusion reigns as U.S. troops scramble for cover. Lt. Dan orders Forrest to run and true to his character, Forrest takes off hoofing it through the jungle and gets out of harm’s way before he realizes that he must go back for Bubba. Along the way, Forrest saves several of his comrades, including Lt. Dan who has been wounded. Forrest retrieves Bubba in the nick of time as the Air Force swoop in to napalm the enemy. Unfortunately, Bubba dies tragically in combat and his last words to Forrest are appropriately enough, "I just want to go home." Forrest catches some lead in his rear end and spends his time in the hospital on his belly, with bandages on his buttocks. During his medical confinement, Forrest indulges himself in his favorite snack—all the ice cream that he can eat. Once our hero recovers from his wound, he learns how to play ping-pong and becomes a champion.

Irony pervades “Forrest Gump.” Although he possesses the lowest I.Q. of everybody, Forrest discovers the true meaning of life, survives the horrors of combat, and emerges from Vietnam as well as the everyday hassle of life was the smartest character. Everybody from start to finish wants to pigeonhole Forrest Gump from the school principal to Lt. Dan, but Forrest surprises everybody in the long run. The military awards Forrest the Congressional Medal of Honor for his daring exploits in saving so many of his fellow soldiers during the Viet Cong ambush. On the commentary track, Zemeckis states that Jenny is a metaphor for America searching for itself. She represents the failure that so many people in America during the 1960s experienced. Eventually, Forrest runs into Jenny again when he attends a peace rally at the Washington, D.C., monument and they splash through the refractory pool into each others arms. Jenny takes up residence with Forrest after a particularly rough episode in her life, but she disappoints Forrest by leaving him without warning. The only way that Forrest can deal with his overwhelming grief is to hit the road running again and he jogs across America and becomes a celebrity. As the film enters its final quarter, we learn that Forrest has been sitting on the bench awaiting the right bus so that he can catch it and ride it to Jenny’s apartment. The woman sitting next to him informs him that Jenny’s apartment is located a mere six blocks away and Forrest takes off running toward it. He learns to his shock that Jenny—who has been working as a waitress--has had a baby, and she has named it Forrest. Initially, Forrest is dumbfounded until Jenny reveals that Forrest is the father. Forrest sits down with his son (Haley Joel Osment of “The Sixth Sense”) and they watch Bert and Ernie on “Sesame Street.”

According to Zemeckis, "The writer, Eric Roth, departed substantially from the book. We flipped the two elements of the book, making the love story primary and the fantastic adventures secondary. Also, the book was cynical and colder than the movie. In the movie, Gump is a completely decent character, always true to his word. He has no agenda and no opinion about anything except Jenny, his mother and God.” Indeed, Zemeckis attributes most of the success of “Forrest Gump” to Roth’s screenplay. Nevertheless, Zemeckis adds several interesting touches to the film. For example, during the Vietnam combat sequences, the Viet Cong enemy are never shown. Zemeckis strives to show everything from Forrest Gump’s perspective and he violates this rule only when he intersperses vignettes of Jenny that Forrest narrates that he could never have known about in the greater scheme of things.

Significantly, the film pioneered some revolutionary techniques, such as inserting a live actor into historic archival footage of important events as well as enabling Oscar nominated actor Gary Sinise to appear convincing as a handicapped Vietnam veteran who has lost both legs in combat. If the structure of “Forrest Gump” is reminiscent of David Fincher’s recent opus “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” this is no surprise because Eric Roth penned scripts for both “Forrest Gump” as well as “Benjamin Button.” Roth got an Oscar for his adaptation of Winston Groom’s novel. Not surprisingly, “Forrest Gump” was awarded Oscars for best visual effects. Interestingly, Paramount Pictures produced this film for $55-million dollars and coined over $600 million dollars from it domestically as well as internationally. “Forrest Gump” was nominated for six other Oscars, including Best Cinematography, Best Make-up, and Best Original Score. Incredibly, John Travolta had the first crack at “Forrest Gump” and later admitted that he made a terrible mistake by passing up this juicy role.