"Rambo 1,2, and 3" (Blu-ray)

Synopsis

Part I 

John Rambo (Stallone) comes home from Viet Nam, a winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor, as well as many other wartime awards, and makes his way to a town south of Portland, Oregon, trying to look up an old friend. He finds that his buddy has passed away.

He leaves, and while he is passing through town, the sheriff picks him up and asks him not to stay, because the US flag on his coat will get him into trouble with townsfolk who were against the war. When John resists, he is arrested, fingerprinted, and treated with abuse by the police.

He escapes and heads for the mountains. The police try to catch him, but Rambo was trained to survive and remain free. A Colonel Trautman (Crenna) in the Green Berets shows up and says that he trained Rambo, and they should let him go. They say no way, they are going to get him. Big mistake.

Part II

Rambo is in prison for the fiasco in Oregon. Col. Trautman arrives at the prison and tells him he can get out with a pardon if he goes on a mission to North Vietnam to retrieve American soldiers missing in action and believed to be still held there against their will (the war has been over for awhile).

He accepts the mission, is captured and tortured by Soviet soldiers who are advising the North Vietnamese. He escapes, produces a great need for body bags in the Soviet military, and rescues said American POWs.

Part III

Col. Trautman asks Johnny Rambo for his services once again, this time in Afghanistan, and Trautman is captured, so John must rescue his friend and mentor.

Commentary

I did not see the original three movies in this series when they were at the theater, and I did not get around to watching them on TV. For what reason, I don't know because I love action films. Anyway, I was surprised at how good they are. In fact, one of them was nominated for an Academy Award. Part II is probably the best, and I sense it had a much, much bigger budget than Part I. These come in a box set of all three, as well as individually, and I would suggest getting them all as a set.

Technical

For their being old movies, the image quality is great. Studios are doing a wonderful job of resurrecting aging camera negatives for Blu-ray. They all have DTS-HD Master Audio, but that is probaby overkill for movies that simply had Dolby Stereo, unless they went back to the original sound recordings and remixed them for 5.1 discrete surround sound.

Extras

There is a modicum of extras including commentaries with all three directors, and other things.