Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here.
Here’s a link to part one of this article.
With DIRTY HARRY, that’s a film I’ve seen over and over, a film I’m intimately familiar with at this point. FIRST BLOOD, not as much, but it’s definitely something I’ve revisited many times since its first release. I’ve always liked it, but of the two, DIRTY HARRY was the one that tickled my pleasure center more directly.
In terms of the sequels, though, RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II got a lot of heavy play in my house in the ‘80s. Directed by George Pan Cosmatos. Written in part by James Cameron. Easily one of the prototypical ‘80s action films in every way. By contrast, I’ve only seen MAGNUM FORCE once or twice, so this double-feature will be interesting. I decided to flip the order from the previous double-feature and start with the new Lionsgate BluRay release of the second film in the RAMBO series.
Ahhh... that TriStar logo. And then that great opening scene where you learn everything you need to know about the ride that’s about to start. “Sir... do we get to win this time?” So efficient. So few sequels come up with truly compelling reasons to bring the characters back, but this one gets it right immediately, gets it out of the way, then get down to the business at hand. Jerry Goldsmith’s score, Jack Cardiff’s photography, and the awesome comic book eye Cosmatos brought to this one... all beautifully represented on this new BluRay disc. When Charles Napier and Martin Kove show up in the same scene, you know you are in for some spectacular scumbag ahead. Along with Steven Berkoff as the commander of the Russian forces, they form the best rogue’s gallery of the entire RAMBO series. Because they give Rambo a compelling set of villains to butt heads with, and because of the way things pile onto him, the film pays off consistently, one solid action scene after another.
I’ll give MAGNUM FORCE the advantage for opening titles, though. Just that blood-red background, Harry’s hand, and the gun. Ohhh, that gun. As with R:FBII, this movie could be categorized as gun porn.
Seriously. Think about that scene at the end of RAMBO where he comes into “The Wolf Den” headquarters and shoots up all of that state-of-the-art equipment that was supposed to save his ass, shirt Stallone with the giant machine gun, both of them oiled up, and there are something like 40 different angles of him feeding the belt into the gun and firing, and it’s really Stallone doing it, and it’s the money shot of the movie pretty much so... yeah... gun porn. MAGNUM FORCE tells you right up front: you came to see Dirty Harry’s great big gun, so... here it is.
I don’t know about you guys, but I always love scanning the opening credits for character actors or department heads I like, and MAGNUM FORCE promises the trifecta of David Soul, Robert Urich, and Tim Matheson, as well as Buddy Van Horn as 2nd unit director. I don’t think I’ve seen this film since it came out on laserdisc, so that’s been about fifteen years. Curious to see if my reactions are any different to it now. I think my first viewing of it may have been on network television, in pan-and-scan, so this print... it’s pretty much a different movie than I what I saw back then. When you see the screenplay credited to Michael Cimino and John Milius (who both did uncredited work on the first one), that should be the thing that guarantees greatness. Those two were both at the height of their creative powers right around the time they were working on this, or just coming into their own. They were pretty hot-shit young guys at the time, and both smart and edgy and outsiders somehow working in the system successfully. Lalo Schifrin’s score is one of the things I forgot to mention in my review of the first film. It’s one of his best, a great piece of mood that captures the paranoid, post-Summer of Love meltdown of San Francisco. MAGNUM FORCE isn’t quite as iconic a piece of work, but it’s more excellent work by him. And then there’s Ted Post.
... who? I mean, not to be a dick, but after Don Siegel made the first one, the best Warner Bros. could come up with was... Ted Post?
The first line of dialogue in the film, as the opening credits end, is a flashback to the first film, and it’s a sign that they were already treating Harry as a sort of real-world superhero. That callback’s like a reminder of his origin story at the top of the first page of a comic from the ‘70s. Harry’s far more mythological in this one, a creative choice that I think sometimes traps a character in amber instead of encouraging a real sense of life.
Regarding Ted Post and scope: he has no feel for the frame or how to use it. Without looking him up on the IMDb, I can tell you this is a TV guy. I know he directed one of the PLANET OF THE APES movies and HANG ‘EM HIGH, which is why I assume he got this job, but this guy is TV, through and through. Then again, there’s Hal Holbrook playing Captain Redherring Ballbuster, and sure enough, he’s busting Harry’s balls, so that’s good news.
Man, MAGNUM FORCE suffers from sequelitis. Here’s a good example. In the first movie, in the classic bank robbery scene, Harry’s eating a hot dog when the robbery starts. It inconveniences him, because he manages one last bite before he sets it down and walks outside, still chewing. Here, Harry sees something going on at an airport while he’s eating a hamburger, so when he decides to get involved, he takes the burger with him and keeps eating the entire time. It’s trying too hard to turn the first film’s quirks into codified habit. That’s the danger in any sequel when you work too hard to repeat the exact ingredients of the original.
Here’s the thing: RAMBO has a reason to exist, narratively. The idea of taking that guy, so broken at the end of FIRST BLOOD, and giving him the chance to go back to Nam and win? That was an unbelievably powerful fantasy in 1985. Love it or hate it, that struck a nerve. It wasn’t an excuse for a sequel; it was a valid reason.
MAGNUM FORCE does ofer some rich thematic material for Harry, or at least it tries. The decision he made at the end of the first film has to change something for the character, and it did. It marked him. His bosses are afraid of his nuclear strike sensibility, but they can’t cut him loose. They know he does have an occasional use. So they ride him constantly, and he ignores them just as constantly. It’s just this side of unbearable for all of them. The idea of Harry discovering this police force within the police force, working without restraint and free to wipe out the worst scum without worrying about due process... well, that’s rich ground for that character to cover. But it really only works as a logical next step if Harry is tempted to join these cops, and he never is. For some reason, he acts like they’re obviously out of control from the moment he figures it out, and that seems wrong to me.
Wouldn’t it make more sense if Harry had a moment where he sees some total piece of shit turned loose to kill again, and he knows when the guy is going to be alone, and he has the chance to kill him without any strings attached? Because it takes the end of the first film and escalates it from there. But here, things play out with all the thematic complexity of an episode of MANNIX. Still, it’s got moments. Scenes. Images. Harry’s Asian neighbor is the best neighbor ever. There’s a charm to watching Clint Eastwood beat six shades of shit out of Hal Holbrook. And there’s a pretty damn good chase scene and protracted cat and mouse action sequence near the end, but I suspect that’s got more to do with Buddy Van Horn, who I mentioned earlier, and who I’m sure I’ll mention again before the end of this series.
Both films feature superior transfers, but it’s obvious which one is better. RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II is confident and focused and it is such a great sequel that it feels like the first film is incomplete without it. MAGNUM FORCE is meandering and unfocused and never really makes the most of the good ideas it does raise. I’ll be playing that disc at least one more time, though, to hear the John Milius commentary, but even with that...
DECISION: RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II
This next match-up is going to be the roughest of the whole series... THE ENFORCER versus RAMBO III. I have a feeling that in a match like that, I’m the one who loses. We’ll see...
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
