Released: May 22, 1985

Directed By: George P. Cosmatos

Screen Play By: Sylvester Stallone & James Cameron

Story By: Kevin Jarre

Stars:  Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Charles Napier, Steven Berkoff, Martin Kove and a bunch of other actors

Plot: Rambo returns to the jungles of Vietnam on a mission to infiltrate an enemy base-camp and rescue the American POWs still held captive there.

Tagline: What most people call hell, he calls home.

How did this movie do?
Budget: $26 Million
Box Office: $300 Million

• Body count: 85 (74 at the hands of Rambo.)
• Top One-Liners
  • Rambo: I want, what they want, and every other guy who came over here and spilled his guts and gave everything he had, wants! For our country to love us as much as we love it! That’s what I want!
  • Rambo: Murdock… I’m coming to get you!
  • Rambo: To survive a war, you gotta become war.
  • Rambo: Mission… accomplished.
  • Podovsky: I see you are no stranger to pain.
  • Rambo: Fuck you.

1. A “Muy Macho” Hero with quotable one-liners played by a recognizable star – Stallone (RAMBO)
2. Over the Top Villain – Podovsky
3. A Montage Sequence – Yes
4. Over the Top Chase Scenes – Foot & Helicopter
5. Epic Fight Scenes – Yes
6. A Villain Speech/Monologue – Yes
7. A Final Showdown – Yes
8. An “Oh Crap” Death for our Bad Guy – So Many “OH CRAP” deaths
9. Franchise Potential – Yes
10. Around a 90 minute runtime – 96
11. A High Body Count –85 (74 at the hands of Rambo.)

• Dolph Lundgren was initially signed as the Russian Lieutenant Colonel Podovsky (played by Steven Berkoff), when Sylvester Stallone realized that it was the same man who was going to be in Rocky IV (1985), so they paid off the contract.
  
  
• John Travolta was originally considered to play a wisecracking sidekick who accompanies Rambo on his rescue mission. In the James Cameron draft, Rambo is paired with a partner, but Sylvester Stallone decided to nix the role to make it more of a solo vehicle. Travolta was suggested to play Rambo in the late 1970s when First Blood (1982) was in pre-production.

• At the time of filming (1985), there were close to 2,500 Vietnam vets still missing in action.
  
  
• The film is dedicated to stuntman Cliff Wenger Jr., who was accidentally killed by one of the film’s explosions.
  
  
• To prepare for this role, Sylvester Stallone did eight months of training for four hours a day. He also took SWAT combat, archery and survival courses.
  
  
• Co-writer James Cameron claims that he only wrote the first draft of the script, and that Sylvester Stallone made many changes to it. Cameron had originally paired Rambo with a humorous sidekick, and had fleshed out the prisoners of war with elaborate backstories that were to be revealed over the course of the film. However, Stallone reportedly didn’t like that the sidekick got all the cool dialogue, and also scrapped most of the POW’s backstories to the point where Cameron claimed that “they might as well have gotten to the jungle to pick up a six-pack of beer”. When the film was released, the political content of the movie was considered controversial, with many feeling that the Vietnam War was altered to look and sound heroic. Cameron commented that he only wrote the action, and that Stallone wrote the politics.
  
  
• The only film in the Rambo series to be nominated for an Oscar.
  
  
• Rambo’s stats, as given in the film: “Rambo, John J., born 7/6/47 Bowie, Arizona of Indian-German descent. Joined army 8/6/64. Accepted, Special Forces specialization, light weapons, cross-trained as medic. Helicopter and language qualified, 59 confirmed kills, two Silver Stars, four Bronze, four Purple Hearts, Distinguished Service Cross, Medal of Honor.”
  
  
• The technical advisor, Tony Maffatone, insisted that all the guns in the movie be real.
  
  
• When Sylvester Stallone ranked his preference of the Rambo films on the UK chat show, The Graham Norton Show (2007), he ranked this one 4th, his least favorite, as it was “like a cartoon”.
  
  
• George P. Cosmatos claimed that one of the challenges was “coming up with new ways to kill Russians”.
  
  
• Remarkably this film has a great deal of foundation in fact. In the early 1980s US Delta Force commandos prepared for a possible mission to rescue US prisoners of war held in Southeast Asia just as they do under Colonel Trautman. However their efforts were stymied by Colonel Bo Gritz, like John Rambo a much decorated former Green Beret and Vietnam War veteran, who launched his own abortive attempts to stage a private rescue raid. A subsequent government inquiry headed by Senators/Vietnam veterans Bob Smith, John Kerry and John McCain (himself a former POW who was held and tortured for 5 years) concluded there were no prisoners left behind and vilified individuals perpetuating the idea as attempting to defraud desperate families.
  
  
• Sylvester Stallone constantly dealt with snakes, spiders and scorpions throughout production.
  
  
• All of the shots of the military base were done on a Mexican Air Force airstrip. The logos have been painted over or obscured, and the real crew always have their backs toward the camera or are far enough away from the camera so no one would notice.
  
  
• Temperatures during filming sometimes reached 120 degrees.
  
  
• In scenes where arrows are being shot, they are attached with wire so they land in the right spot without hurting anyone.
  
  
• The original director of photography fell ill shortly before filming began and the producers were in a panic to find a last minute replacement who was willing to travel to Mexico. As sheer luck would have it, actor Steven Berkoff discovered in a phone call to a mutual friend that legendary British DOP Jack Cardiff happened to be holidaying close by at the time. He mentioned it to Sylvester Stallone who jumped at the chance to get the Oscar winning 70 year old veteran on-board and hurriedly brought it to the attention of the producer and then contacted him. Cardiff was initially reluctant to accept the job as he had only just finished work on the Stephen King film adaptation, Cat’s Eye (1985), and was only intending to have a quiet vacation before returning home to the UK. But Stallone’s persistence plus a substantial fee for six weeks work proved too much of a temptation.
  
  
• The line, “I can see you’re no stranger to pain”, spoken by Steven Berkoff, also appears in Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993), a spoof of Rambo III (1988). This time, the line was spoken by one of Saddam’s interrogators to Richard Crenna, whose role as Col. Denton Walte ironically spoofed his own role in the Rambo movies.
  
  
• Steven Berkoff, who plays the main villain in the film, Lt. Col Podovsky, also played the main villain a year earlier in Beverly Hills Cop (1984), a film that was originally developed with Sylvester Stallone in the lead role. Stallone’s version of Beverly Hills Cop (1984) was subsequently re-worked to become the film Cobra (1986), Stallone’s follow up collaboration with director George P. Cosmatos after this film.
  
  
• Lee Marvin was originally going to play Marshall Murdock but changed his mind.
  
  
• The film’s theme song, “Peace in Our Life”, was performed by Sylvester Stallone’s brother, Frank Stallone.
  
  
• Despite being an action film, no one dies until the 34-minute mark, over a third of the film’s runtime.
  
  
• Robert Davi was set to star in the movie but dropped out to star in The Goonies (1985).
  
  
• According to the Rambo Survival Mode on DVD, Rambo attended Rangeford High School and graduated in 1965.
  
  
• This is Steven Berkoff’s second time portraying a Russian villain. The first time is in Octopussy (1983).
  
  
• This is the second time that a Rocky film and a Rambo film were released in the same year. Both films star Sylvester Stallone. This film and Rocky IV (1985) were released in 1985. The first time that a Rocky film and a Rambo film were released in the same year was in 1982. Rocky III (1982) and First Blood (1982) were released in 1982. Rocky III (1982) was released on May 28, 1982, and First Blood (1982) was released on October 22, 1982. This film was released on May 24, 1985, and Rocky IV (1985) was released on November 27, 1985. Also, in both cases, a film from either Stallone-led franchise was released either during the summer or autumn.
  
  
• Sylvester Stallone had worked with Martin Kove in Death Race 2000 (1975).
  
  
• Much of Jerry Goldsmith’s heightened scoring sounds very similar to the scoring he did for the intense action sequences in BABY: SECRET OF THE LOST LEGEND – released just two months earlier.
  
  
• According to the stats given by Murdock, Rambo has 59 confirmed kills during the Vietnam War. However, Rambo kills 74 people during the course of this film, which spans two days. So, in two days, Rambo kills more people than his whole time in the war.
  
  
• At the end of the novel “First Blood” by David Morrell, John Rambo dies, which doesn’t allow for sequels and ends on a dark note. The ending was changed in the movie, allowing for this sequel to be made.
  
  
• In a rare alternative take of the ending scene (when Rambo says, “I want, what they want, and every other guy who came over here and spilled his guts and gave everything he had, wants! For our country to love us as much as we love it! That’s what I want!”), Rambo wept as he told this to Trautman. A behind-the-scenes video of this take can be seen in an episode of Entertainment Tonight (1981) from the mid-to-late 80s.
  
  
• While writing the script for this film, James Cameron had done research on Vietnam veterans and Post Traumatic Stress Disorders. At the time, Cameron was also writing the script for Aliens (1986). He used his research to also write PTSD into Ellen Ripley’s story arc after the trauma she went through in Alien (1979).
  
  
• In James Cameron’s script, Rambo is a mental patient and had been in a mental hospital following the events of the first movie and is visited by Col. Trautman. However, when Sylvester Stallone rewrote the script, Rambo is in a labor work prison. James Cameron reused Rambo being in a mental hospital for Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) which Linda Hamilton’s character from the first movie Sarah Connor has been put in a mental hospital and has gone from a waitress to a mad criminal suffering from acute schizo-effective disorder following the events of the first movie.
  
  
• There are two immediate giveaways that Murdock was lying about serving in the Marines in Vietnam besides the fact Rambo points out to Trautman about misidentifying the service of 2nd Battalion:
  
  
  • First, when Murdock first meets Rambo, he complains about the heat saying “there’s nothing like it”. If Murdock had served in Vietnam like he claimed, he would’ve already experienced the heat and would theoretically be used to it.
    
    
  • Second, during his briefing to Rambo about why they are on this mission, he talks about the veterans and their families with a detached attitude. If Murdock had served in the Marines and had “lost a lot of good men” like he had claimed, he would’ve taken this mission more personally.
    
    
• When Rambo uses the Chicken/Hen/Fowl blood to fool the Vietnamese Soldiers in the sugarcane field near the village…the alive hen Rambo finds near the Gasoline can and the dead one shown later near the Gasoline Can in the sugarcane field are of different breeds of Fowl/Hen/Chicken.