FAQ

If you pay close attention in First Blood you'll notice that Rambo is wearing the same red sweatshirt when he is first arrested. When he was released from prison at the beginning of Part II all the clothes he was wearing when he was arrested would have been returned to him (the sweatshirt along with the jeans he was wearing) and since those were probably the only clothes he owned he had nothing else to wear.

By federal order, John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) is released from prison and sent on a covert mission into the jungles of Vietnam in order to document by photograph whether any POWs are still being held there. Aided by Vietnamese freedom fighter Co Bao (Julia Nickson), Rambo turns what is supposed to be a recon mission into a rescue mission.

Rambo: First Blood Part II is a sequel to First Blood (1982), which was based on First Blood, a 1972 novel by Canadian-American novelist David Morrell. In the novel, Rambo died at the end of the shoot-out in Hope, Washington. The expanded story and screenplay for Rambo II was written by James Cameron, Sylvester Stallone, and Kevin Jarre. Morrell novelized the movie in 1985. Rambo II was followed by two more sequels, Rambo III (1988) and Rambo (2008).

After blowing up the camp and rescuing the POWs, Rambo heads his helicopter toward the American camp in Thailand but is tailed by Lt Col. Podovsky (Steven Berkoff), who fires upon him several times. Faking a hit, Rambo lands his copter on a river and plays dead. Thinking he has the advantage, Podovsky lands near Rambo and prepares to fire. Suddenly, Rambo springs to life and fires on Podovsky, destroying him. He then returns to the "Wolf Den" and shoots up Murdock's command center. Holding Murdock at arm's length with his knife, he demands that Murdock locate and rescue any remaining POWs in Vietnam. Assured that the rescued POWs are receiving medical care, Rambo prepares to leave the camp. Trautman informs him that he's received a second Medal of Honor and asks where he is going now that he is free. Rambo replies that he will be staying in Vietnam where all his friends died. Trautman agrees that the war was wrong but warns Rambo not to hate his country for it. "Hate?", Rambo replies, "I'd die for it. What I want...and every other guy who came over here and spilled his guts and gave everything he had wants...is for our country to love us as much as we love it." In the final scene, Trautman asks how he will live, and Rambo replies, "Day by day," before walking off.

By far the biggest red flag in terms of the content is the violence. While there is a very high body count there is very little blood or gore and it seems like this would be standard PG-13 level violence (keep in mind that films like Star Wars also have very high body counts yet are nowhere near R-rated material). However along with the violence the film does contain one usage of the word "fuck" along with other usages of "goddamn" and "bastard". There is also a shot of Stallone's rear end along with references to prostitutes but what probably pushes this film into the R-rating is the emotional intensity. At one point in the film Rambo is condemned to spend the rest of his life in the same POW camp he was a prisoner of during the war (he only would have had to serve 5 more years in an American prison had he not accepted the mission), he is submerged up to his chin in a bog of pig feces and is covered by leeches. On top of that the film depicts POWs suffering in deplorable conditions and it is revealed that they have been living there for over a decade. When you add in the torture scene (there is no blood but still disturbing) it produces a very mild R-rated film.

What is very interesting however is that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom came out the previous year with a PG rating despite being slightly more graphic and violent than Rambo: First Blood Part II. It was also just as emotionally intense as it featured innocent children turned into slaves who were frequently beaten with whips, at one point a young boy begs for death and of course there is the infamous "heart" scene. There was also a torture scene that was considerably more graphic than the "electrocution" scene in Rambo: First Blood Part II (Indy is beaten with his own whip and receives numerous welts on his back with blood oozing out). However Temple of Doom had little to no profanity (one usage of "shit'), no nudity and only very mild sexual references. It is also wildly rumored that if Temple of Doom had been made by anyone other than Spielberg and Lucas it would have been slapped with an R-rating.