'Rambo: First Blood Part II' With Bill Simmons and Kyle Brandt

Bill and Kyle are tasked with a secret mission to rewatch Sylvester Stallone in 'Rambo: First Blood Part II,' also featuring Richard Crenna, Charles Napier, and Julia Nickson. Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, Jessie Lopez and Matt Pevic 2026 Mazda CX-50. Designed for Safety. MazdaUSA.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Bill Simmons?

  The Rewatchables is brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network. You can't find Kyle Brandt on The Ringer Podcast Network, except for here. You can find him on ESPN, doing a whole bunch of NFL stuff. The season has started. By the time people hear this, we will know just about everything that has happened in Week 1. And we're also gonna know that our guy, Jon Rambo, came back for Rewatchables, and it's coming right after this. This episode of The Rewatchables is presented by Mazda. One reason why Mazda was named Consumer Reports' safest new car brand? Confidence isn't an upgrade, it's a given. Take the Mazda CX-50 Hybrid. It comes standard with a suite of proactive safety features. Mazda, move

• 0:51Bill Simmons?

  and be moved. Visit MazdaUSA.com and discover how confidence comes standard. Consumer Reports does not endorse products or services. Visit MazdaUSA.com to learn more.

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• 2:17Bill Simmons?

  Rambo: First Blood, Part 2. Do you think they should have called it First Blood 2? What would you have done here?

• 2:25Speaker 02

  I think I would have called the first one Rambo, and I think Stallone wishes he could have come back. All for him, it's about the branding. I got Rocky, I'm gonna get to Cobra, and fuck, I should have gone back and named it after my character, so I can own more of it, and we can run with this. This is Rambo 2. First Blood should have just been called Rambo.

• 2:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think I agree. Well, it's impossible to explain how huge this movie was in 1985. This was an absolute, it was a top-three movie of the year. It was a Reagan-era wet dream action movie. Reagan, Reagan talked about it. He made Rambo a character, it then became a political football for the conservatives and liberals. It became an avatar for Cold War America, and more importantly, for our purposes, Arnold versus Sly, it was on, starting in 1985, because Arnold had Commando, and we were off. This was our Bird, Bird vs. Magic for action movie heroes.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  It's also one of the more hilarious Vietnam movies. You don't see a lot of funny Vietnam movies. I found myself on the Rewatch bill. I was laughing at some parts, I think you're supposed to, and then some parts you're definitely not supposed to. I loved it so much as a kid. It's one of these where I taped it off of cable, onto a VHS tape, and put the piece of masking tape on the back and just wrote Rambo 2.

• 3:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I did too.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  I get home from school, and I get a snack, and I put in Rambo 2. And I get home from school, and I put a snack for like, weeks. And I remember I thought it was badass. Now, as an adult, I was so entertained by the comedy of it, and just Stallone, being 1,000 out of 10 Stallone in this movie. It's like, he's never gone for it more. He's never been more ripped. He's never done more of a caricature of himself without knowing that he's doing it. I smiled through the whole thing.

• 4:10Bill Simmons?

  The unintentional comedy factor of this movie has gone up each year, starting in about 1995. I felt the same way. I was openly laughing during a lot of the scenes. I have a backstory with this movie.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  Let's hear it.

• 4:24Bill Simmons?

  HBO, every once in a while, in the mid-'80s, would have these movies on the schedule, but they wouldn't tell you what it was. It would be like, and you would get the little HBO guide every year, or you could see on your cable guide, and it was just like a mystery movie. And the biggest one they did for this was Christmas Eve, 1985, Ghostbusters, where there was just like, we have a Christmas present for you. It was like, you do? What is it? And then it was Ghostbusters. And this is an era where it was, the movie would come out, it would be in the theaters forever. Then it would move to home video, and home video's starting to take off here, and that would take forever, and it would just never be on cable. Some of the bigger movies, it would take over

• 5:05Bill Simmons?

  a year. So Rambo, on July 4, 1986, they're like, we have a, we have a surprise for you, on July 4. And I, me and my friends were all like, it's gonna be Rambo, it's gonna be Rambo 2, this is what it's gonna be. But we didn't know for sure, and then they start, you see the HBO logo, they do the whole thing, the little preview, and then it goes right into the music, and it's like, yeah! By the way, no Girlfriend for me in 1986, just for, just for the record. But yeah, super exciting, but that's, that's how big this movie was. It was like, oh, could it be, could it be Rambo 2? Could this be the one? And it was.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  Now, they would just set up an octagon on the White House lawn, and that would be the present, too, you know? It's, but to, to the young people, kids, like, that's, I know we'll get into this, it's the strangest dynamic, where this is a hard R movie with merciless killings and a huge body count. Toys, cartoons, there was a Rambo Big Wheel that the kids would kill for, and if someone on your block had the Rambo Big Wheel out of control, the knife was super popular, and not for like, Transformers or something. It was this R-rated movie where he just kills an entire jungle full of people, but they still put it to the kids.

• 6:24Bill Simmons?

  And it felt like it modernized action movies, too. I do feel like there's a before and after with this movie and Commando, which we talked about a little when we did Commando. But you go before this, we're in the Dirty Harry era, we're in, you know, the Warriors, there was like, one-off action movies, but there weren't like, superheroes like this. Dirty Harry was probably the closest.

• 6:45Speaker 02

  Dirty Harry and this movie are not in the same solar system. They look so different, they feel so different. It's not, this, here's the thing about this movie, too. Like, First Blood is, is Rocky. This is Rocky IV. We're just gonna give you sugar.

• 7:01Bill Simmons?

  We skipped two movies, you're right.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, fuck it, dude. No vegetables, we're gonna blow some shit up, we're gonna be ripped as hell. This is just gonna be really fun. You, I remember, back in the day, you used to say that, that First Blood was, was about something. It had some really powerful, loaded messages.

• 7:16Bill Simmons?

  It's a good Vietnam movie.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  This is barely about shit. It's a great Vietnam movie. And there's the part at the end of the movie where Sly's like, "I used to operate million-dollar machinery, now I can't even get a job parking cars!" And you're like, fuck, I felt that. Now, he's just walking, he's like, "Where's Murdock?" It's, it's not the same substance.

• 7:33Bill Simmons?

  No. You, well, you mentioned, out of all those things, there was a Rambo Kids cartoon, which I had forgotten about, that you sent this morning. Did that, I tried it, there wasn't a lot of research on that one, but I guess, I guess it did run. It was a very strange era for cartoons, where they would just take any movie and try to make a cartoon out of it for a couple of years. This is particularly nuts, though, because this is like, a traumatized Vietnam War veteran who's just trying to kill everybody, and they're like, "Hey, the kids might like this. Let's, let's put this on Saturdays."

• 8:06Speaker 02

  Saturday morning, we'll do some breakfast cereal, do some Sunny D, and if, I would, I would treat yourself, if you're a Rambo fan, to find the trailer for this cartoon. Because it's Rambo skiing on a wintery mountaintop while he shoots people, he's driving a race car, like in a Grand Prix. They're trying to make him into some sort of like, speed racer, James Bond superhero, but all roads back then were leading to Saturday morning cartoons, including Karate Kid. Bill and Ted had a Saturday morning cartoon a few years later. You had to do it, because we were all watching.

• 8:36Bill Simmons?

  Ghostbusters, yeah.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  Oh, a couple.

• 8:38Bill Simmons?

  There's one part in the Rambo cartoon trailer where he's skiing, I think with a machine gun, and it's just like, this is amazing. I can't believe I missed this. So, 1984, 1985, the Cold War pop culture heyday. This is it, like War Games and, and uh, the day after were eighty-three, eighty-four, really starting with the Summer Olympics where the cowards, the Russians didn't show up. And we just dominated everything and it was like a big, hey, hey, look at, look at all the gold medals we're winning. August nineteen eighty-four, right after the Summer Olympics, Red Dawn.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  Let's go.

• 9:14Bill Simmons?

  Um, which we have not done yet on the rewatchables. I know you're been in the bullpen warming up for a couple of years.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  Wolverines, listen, one of the most haunting shots in all of eighties cinema is the classroom as the parachutes start to fall down. It's, it's chilling to this day and you get Swayze and C. Thomas and Sheen and they're arming up and screaming about their high school football team. I love it.

• 9:33Bill Simmons?

  We still don't understand why the Russians were so determined to take over obscure parts of America, over actual cities. Yeah.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  We must take Cheyenne.

• 9:45Bill Simmons?

  Right. So we have that, we have Tom Clancy releases Hunt from Red October in October nineteen eighty-four, which was a massive hit and was like, what's the movie gonna be? March eighty-five, Iron Sheik Nikolai Volkov, tag team title champs at WrestleMania. They would each play the National Anthem for each other and stand at attention. They would do the Iranian National Anthem, then Volkov, he would sing, he would get furious when the people booed him, so that happened. Rambo two is May nineteen eighty-five. June nineteen eighty-five, Sting, first solo album, Post Police, releases his song, The Russians, or it's called Russians, but it's about the Russians, do they love their children too? It's like, oh Sting, getting poetic about the Cold War.

• 10:30Bill Simmons?

  November eighty-five, Rocky IV. And then everything peaks, December thirtieth nineteen eighty-five, Hulk Hogan comes out at MSG, first match against Macho Man Randy Savage, comes out to Real American. The song that they made, capitalizing on all this shit, where they dump Eye of the Tiger from, uh, from Survivor and create this new song, they do the video, he's holding the flag. Comes crashing down and it hurts inside. Waving the flag and Newsweek, there's Newsweek, uh, end of December.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  It's awesome.

• 11:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Sly.

• 11:12Bill Simmons?

  So yeah, this is just where we were. It was, uh, it was Reagan telling everybody, we're, we're gonna blow away all of our enemies. Um, there's the conservative liberal thing, which we did not have the internet really to, to capture at that point, but, um, Reaganomics, uh, the, we're just basically like, we are gonna defend ourselves at all costs. And then Rambo becomes the avatar for all of this.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. And I think nobody went harder in this than Sly. Because the poster of Rambo with the bazooka, killing Russians was, would get like a big fuck yeah from you back then. And then Sly doubles down, he's like, I'm going to box an unbeatable Soviet who's on steroids.

• 11:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  In Russia, cause I'm not afraid. And at the end of the movie, the Gorbachev guy's gonna stand up and clap, cause I say if you can change, we can change. Like Sly was on this shit and he felt it and he, nobody did more of it.

• 12:08Bill Simmons?

  And by the way, as we discussed in the Rocky IV rewatchables, might've ended the Cold War. For all we know, it was really never the same. Yeah.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  Definitely.

• 12:16Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Sly's out of zenith here. So eighty-two to eighty-five, he's got Rocky III and First Blood, same year in nineteen eighty-two. Eighty-three, direct staying alive, which is considered a bomb, but was the eighth biggest movie of nineteen eighty-three. What was a bomb was next year, Rhinestone with, uh, Dolly Parton and Sly. And

• 12:37Speaker 02

  Rest in peace.

• 12:37Bill Simmons?

  First time in a couple of years Sly took one on the chin. Um, just wasn't good. It's a pretty legendary bomb, but it does lead to Sly saying, all right, I'll just double down on Rambo and Rocky and I'm gonna do Rambo two and Rocky IV in the span of six months. And then the success of these movies, cause Back to the Future is the number one movie, makes two hundred and twelve million eighty-five. Rambo is second at one hundred and fifty million. Rocky IV is the only other hundred million dollar movie at one twenty-seven.

• 13:07Bill Simmons?

  And those two events lead to, uh, our beloved Cobra. As we covered in the Cobra rewatchables and Sly eating pizza with, by cutting it with scissors, because he has now flown too close to the sun.

• 13:19Speaker 02

  He takes frozen pizza out of the freezer, which you can't eat frozen. Cuts it with scissors and eats it. And I always love the timing of it, cause you can see the businessman in Sly. He's thinking, I got my soldier, I got my boxer, now I'm gonna introduce my cop. I need a cop who goes against the rules and plays by his own set of identity. This is Cobra. And then Cobra didn't work like they needed it to, but this was, there was supposed to be Cobra four, Cobra five, everything.

• 13:48Bill Simmons?

  Toothpick.

• 13:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, all of it.

• 13:50Bill Simmons?

  Glasses. Mono-syllabic.

• 13:55Bill Simmons?

  I think this might've been an all-time apex mountain year.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Let's talk about it.

• 13:59Bill Simmons?

  I was trying to, I was trying to think of other actors that, you know, Tom Cruise had the first Mission Impossible and Jerry Maguire together in ninety-six. And it just felt like both of those were hits and he couldn't do anything. So we had this a couple of times, but to have two of the top three movies in a year, where there's three massive successes in a year and you have two of the three, and you're the star and it's all you, and you're doing basically two different variations of yourself, but you're also shirtless or just ripped, you're training, there's, there's close-ups of your oiled muscles as you're putting on your headband. In Rocky IV, there's just entire scenes of him, you know, training sequences with,

• 14:43Bill Simmons?

  eh, the movie, there's no dialogue for fifteen minutes in Rocky IV. He just kinda figured out the MTV era and where he fit in with the Cold War and everything else.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  And they're like, people be like, oh, I love, uh, the Rocky IV training montage. And I'm always like, which one? There's two. They go back to back, there's two of them.

• 15:00Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  I remember when we did Cliffhanger, you had a list of Sly was on record of the movies that he was in the best shape for. And he said Rocky III, and then he said Cliffhanger, and he said Rocky IV. And it's so, this one, no, he said Rambo three rather, Rambo three, Rocky IV, not this one. Can you imagine how he looks in this movie? And it's like not in his top three hours in the best shape ever. Absurd.

• 15:26Bill Simmons?

  It's like Tom Brady's best NFL seasons and like ones that win the Super Bowl aren't even on his top four. He did eight months of training for four hours a day, took SWAT combat, archery classes, survival courses, and I think this is the most ripped he's looked in a movie. I don't know, you're, you're, you're a bigger weightlifter guy than me. What, what was his most ripped? What was his, what was his physique apex? Is it here? Is it Rocky IV? What is it?

• 15:53Speaker 02

  There's a shot when he gets in the ring with Drago, where Duke takes off his robe and you like, you drop your drink, cause he's oiled. And he's like, I don't even know where his organs are in there, he's so cut, but like, they got him in there somehow. Cause he's supposed to be in Siberia training with halofs and shit like that for months. So it's, it's, it's insane to me that I could look at this movie, Rambo two and be like, eh, little flabby for Sly. I've seen him better. It's insane, but I'm still there.

• 16:24Bill Simmons?

  Well, the steroids also weren't as good in nineteen eighty-five, because you can see from all the wrestlers and the football players, it would make your, your neck bigger and it kind of would just put water in your body, so you were, you seemed a little bloated. But he doesn't seem bloated at all. He seems like what it would look like now. So he must've had the best stuff back then.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  He had the best stuff and I really do think he was a maniacal worker. Like I really do. And, and here's the thing about, like, I, one of my takeaways from watching this movie, Sly's vice is vanity. Like Sly loves looking good on camera. He always wants to look hot. And I don't think Schwarzenegger had the same thing. Schwarzenegger was posing as an athlete, but dude, in this movie, there, he's getting tortured and he looks sexy. Like they're pulling him out of the shit thing with the leeches on him, like he's still eye fucking the camera the whole time. Like he always wants to look attractive and Arnold wouldn't, would, wouldn't be like that, but Sly's like, no, I want the ladies to be all over me and the camera shoots him beautifully.

• 17:22Bill Simmons?

  Well, Arnold would, would got that fixed from his bodybuilding competitions.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 17:26Bill Simmons?

  Sly never really had the same, unfortunately.

• 17:31Bill Simmons?

  It didn't help with his performance. And I'm almost wondering, we have

• 17:35Speaker 02

  What do you mean?

• 17:36Bill Simmons?

  We have the overacting award that we do, that we keep adding names to. This is a borderline Rambo two underacting award.

• 17:45Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 17:45Bill Simmons?

  He's monosyllabic. He's just mailing in scenes. The second scene, when he comes in, when he meets Martin Cove, AKA John Kreese and Murdoch. Cove's talking to him like he's, Rambo's not even saying lines and he's just doing one word answers. He's saying everything like this and I, I, I guess it was a choice. I don't really under fully understand it. What did you make of that?

• 18:09Speaker 02

  I could not agree with you more. I have written down the Sly Stallone underacting award. At one point, he's trying to hit real dialogue.

• 18:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  And he's like, something, the mind is the strongest weapon. And you gotta be like, cut.

• 18:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  Sly, you gotta, you gotta do something.

• 18:25Bill Simmons?

  Give us more.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  You gotta do something. And then he gets to Cobra and does even less.

• 18:31Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 18:32Speaker 02

  You can barely hear him. And so it's like, I know what you're going for, but juice it up a fucking little bit here, Sly. But no one would say that.

• 18:39Bill Simmons?

  Well, because we know it's a choice because you see him in Tango and Chas, Tango and Cash three years later. He's like, hey, whoa, he's like doing like the

• 18:47Speaker 02

  That's so true.

• 18:48Bill Simmons?

  Over the top stuff. No, so he's, I mean, there's a hilarious scene when he's with Co, played by Julia Nixon. Uh, his very cute female, I guess, accomplice during this whole thing. And all of a sudden it's a rom com scene for like three minutes. He's like, so where are you from? And it's like, it's like, what's happening? You've said 10 words for the entire movie. Now it's like, so what are your parents like? Uh, Stallone ranked his preference of Rambo films in the Graham Norton Show.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. Give me it.

• 19:21Bill Simmons?

  He ranked this one fourth. He said it was his least favorite and he said it was like a cartoon. I, yeah, this is your fault, Sly Stallone. You, you did every aspect of this. They even hired the director, George P. Cosmatos, who also did Cobra a year later. And Stallone would just famously, you know, kind of bully the guy out and do all the directing himself. I think he also kind of did that for, you know, he directed Rocky IV too, but um, these were all Stallone's choices. I don't know why, why he's, and this movie was a phenomenon. I don't know why he's embarrassed of it. I, Rambo three and Rambo four, I don't really acknowledge, do you?

• 19:56Speaker 02

  No, of course not. No, Rambo three was, Rambo three, the Troutman gets kidnapped and they get the fuck out of here. We're doing too much with that.

• 20:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  Right, right, right. First Blood's obviously awesome. I love it. It's dark. There's cops. There's great actors. There's real drama on stakes, but this movie is just like a big fucking ice cream sundae with some heavy metal on in the background. How do you not like this movie? It kicks ass.

• 20:18Bill Simmons?

  And it was a massive success for him. It was weird to see him kind of distance himself from it.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 20:23Bill Simmons?

  I have some questions about what we should have done with the sequels after. Uh, quickly, some supporting cast members. Richard Crenna, his 1985 was Rambo First Blood Part Two. This is coming off Flamingo Kid the year before, by the way. Rambo Two, Summer Rental with John Candy.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  Love that movie.

• 20:42Bill Simmons?

  And a TV movie called The Rape of Richard Beck, where he played Richard Beck. Yeah.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  I'm confused.

• 20:49Bill Simmons?

  It's a movie about a cop who um, gets sexually assaulted by a criminal. And he's Richard Beck and I would, at some point this weekend, recommend watching the uh, trailer.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  You've not seen The Rape of Richard Beck.

• 21:03Bill Simmons?

  I saw the trailer on YouTube because I was like, what is this? And uh, yeah, it's, that's the movie. This is, you know, a lot of social issues happening in the eighties, including um, that. So yeah, anyway, those are his three movies. He's Troutman, Richard Beck and Al Pellet in Summer Rental.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  The problem is when I see Richard Beck getting sexually assaulted, I just picture him in the beret. Like I, I, he always has that beret on.

• 21:29Bill Simmons?

  Man, I didn't see the movie, so maybe, maybe that's what happened. He's, he's used perfectly here. It's a lot of, it's a lot of like, we're gonna need Kyle Brandt for that Monday show. Well, don't forget one thing. What? A Bills jersey. He's, he's uh, he's just karaoke. He's Troutman karaoke in this movie. I kind of enjoy it. I gotta say.

• 21:52Speaker 02

  I have some, some Troutman thoughts slightly later, but I will jump in to say that Sly loves the older sage.

• 22:01Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  He vouches for his crazy character and it's kind of the Sly whisper. Like obviously you had Mick and then you have Duke and you have Troutman here. And in Cobra, we get that guy who, when they're outside the grocery store and he's like, he's all buried in there. We can't get to him. Then there's a pause. He's like, bring in the Cobra. You're like, fuck yeah. And the guy's like, don't worry Cobra, I, I'll keep the commissioner breathing down my neck. I'll, I'll handle him for you. There's always a guy who's like, just let this genius work. He repeats that thing over and over and I don't think anybody does it better than Troutman.

• 22:32Bill Simmons?

  It's like his own Ernie Adams.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:34Bill Simmons?

  Yes. So we have Richard Crenna, we have Martin Cove playing Erickson. Uh, he, Martin Cove does get enough credit for being in two top five box office smashes, back to back years. Karate Kid is Kreese and then uh, then Erickson in this movie. Do you want to compare and contrast Kreese and Erickson? Is there any difference at all between those two people?

• 22:54Speaker 02

  Let me tell you something, Bill. There's no Erickson. It's just Kreese. Kreese showed up. He's opening a dojo in Thailand. He has an alias. It's fucking Kreese. He shows up in this movie. He's got on a, you know, a sleeveless getup. He's got a vest. He has a little button with a frowny face on it. And he has a massive revolver that's holstered in his vest. You just don't see it much. And it's that same beautiful center parted crease, blow dried hair. It's Kreese. It's, it's, it's strike hard, strike first, no mercy Kreese.

• 23:24Bill Simmons?

  He looks exactly the same.

• 23:26Speaker 02

  I know. He looks great.

• 23:28Bill Simmons?

  It's pretty funny. Well, you have him and you have Charles Napier as Murdoch, Marshall Murdoch. Who, I gotta say for, if you're just putting a Mount Rushmore for that guys.

• 23:39Speaker 02

  It's beautiful.

• 23:40Bill Simmons?

  He's the security guard in Silence of the Lambs who gets killed by Lecter.

• 23:53Bill Simmons?

  He's that guy. And he does like one of the great screams. Ah! Uh, sees that, he's the judge in Philadelphia.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:02Bill Simmons?

  We don't live in this courtroom, do we, your honor? He's Blues Brothers, country and western singer, who ends up trying to chase down the Blues Brothers and drives his bus into the water. And then he's Murdoch in Rambo. That's about as good of a that guy, Mount Rushmore, as you're getting.

• 24:19Speaker 02

  I always think of those fan conventions where the actors show up and behind them, they have like the posters of the movies that they've done. So they can sign headshots. His posters would be really cool.

• 24:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I don't even know what I'd want him to sign.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  I honestly, as much as I

• 24:33Bill Simmons?

  Lambs.

• 24:34Speaker 02

  I think it's silence.

• 24:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  I was, dude, I was Googling this morning. I was like, now was Napier the guy who Lecter crucifies or gets his face cut off? Which one? He's the crucified guy who gets his guts split up.

• 24:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's him. Shouldn't have given him that second meal dinner. Uh, I call him Chuck Napier. He's been in my life for so long.

• 24:52Speaker 02

  Absolutely great.

• 24:53Bill Simmons?

  And then another that guy, we have that guy off because Steven Berkoff's in this. AKA Victor Maitland from Beverly Hills Cop. In 83, 84, 85, he's the villain in Octopussy. He's the villain in Beverly Hills Cop two. And he's the villain in Rambo two, playing a Russian. He's got different accents in each movie. And uh, he's just, you see him and you know, he's a bad guy. There's no, there was no, apparently a famous English actor from the sixties and seventies. Really well accomplished stage actor, who then just was like, fuck it. I'm going to be a bad guy in the mid eighties. Give me some parts. Yeah.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  I figured he was just an Eastern European or Russian or something.

• 25:28Bill Simmons?

  Just has an Eastern European face.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  The block, the, the, the corner that he was on for a long time, 10 years after this movie was taken by the guy who's the bad guy in The Saint. Remember that guy who plays a Russian in every single movie and he's an Eyes Wide Shut with the costume shop? He would have played that role of this movie 10 years later.

• 25:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I don't know who that guy is now, but uh, Berkoff, I mean, Victor Maitland is his, is that, that's one of the great villains. Just staring him down. I love that guy. Uh, then we have Julia Nixon as the accomplice. Um.

• 26:02Bill Simmons?

  I don't know, her and Charlotte Lewis from Golden Child, two mid eighties babes that just, this was sadly their peaks and I don't, I don't know what we did wrong. I don't know why we didn't have more Julia.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  There's a part in Golden Child where Eddie Murphy is having a dream sequence and he comes across her and she's like coming on to him and she's all hot and she's like, can we spend some more time together? And Jesus, as a nine year old, that fucked me up. She's so, so hot.

• 26:24Bill Simmons?

  Julie Nixon, long career, her IMDb, like a lot of TV shows, like, kind of like the fourth or fifth lead in a couple of shows, a lot of like CSI's.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  And you're like, wow, Julia.

• 26:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it was good.

• 26:35Speaker 02

  I didn't know, I, I didn't, I wasn't familiar with your game.

• 26:38Bill Simmons?

  Right. So like a 40 year career, but I think she's good in this. And then, um, most important, indoor aviator guy. Indoor aviators guy.

• 26:51Speaker 02

  What do you mean? Explain by that. Cause I know what you mean. What are you talking about?

• 26:55Bill Simmons?

  So apparently he plays the character Lifer. So you have Murdoch and you have Kreese and then you have this third guy who's wearing sunglasses indoors, who's got like a, I don't know, I don't even know how to describe his outfit. He's got like a thin Miami Vice beard and thinning blonde hair in the back, barely has any lines. He's the one who, uh, who when Rambo's jumping out of the plane, Rambo can't get out, he's trying to help him. He's played by Steve Williams. Do you want to guess how many other IMDb credits Steve Williams had?

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Just tell the people, cause I already looked. It's unbelievable.

• 27:30Bill Simmons?

  This is it. This is his only one. He's Lifer.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  How?

• 27:34Bill Simmons?

  I was researching 15 minutes. I was on Google. I was on every AI site. Like just tell me more about Steve Williams, Lifer. No information online. None. It's like it's been scrubbed. We know nothing about him. I don't know why he's in this movie. I don't know why he didn't act again. I don't know if some actor called in sick and they grabbed somebody from the crew. It's just a fucking mystery. And if anyone knows, feel free to email us because I couldn't find out any info about Steve Williams.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  This guy is probably sixth or seventh on the call sheet for a hundred million dollar massive movie. He holds a gun to Troutman's head. It's not an inconsequential role. And you're telling me that he never even did a guest spot on Highway to Heaven or anything?

• 28:15Bill Simmons?

  Nothing?

• 28:16Speaker 02

  Anything. But when it's like, I love that Kreese is flying the helicopter. He's like, five seconds. And this guy just goes, party time. And I'm like, that's not bad. We can work with that. It's not bad. He got a couple of lines.

• 28:28Bill Simmons?

  I thought for sure he would have been in like a season three Miami Vice episode or, yeah, Love Boat in 1983, nothing. And the other funny thing is his character's name was Lifer.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  Which is ironic.

• 28:40Bill Simmons?

  They don't.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  Cause he's supposed to be in it for life.

• 28:42Bill Simmons?

  Right. They don't, they never say his name. And I don't know, that's just what they decided to name him in the script. So anyway, Steve Williams, indoor aviators guy, just a mystery. Uh, I know nothing makes you happier in an action movie when somebody's wearing sunglasses indoors for the entire movie. He might've even had them, did he have them on in the plane jump at the end or no?

• 29:01Speaker 02

  I'm just gonna say yes, probably. I think that was it. Steve Williams, I, it just sounds like an AI fake name, like a create a Madden player. It's Steve Williams. Has nothing to do with anything. One and done.

• 29:14Bill Simmons?

  There's gotta be a story. First of all, that might not be his real name. There's gotta be some story why he's in the movie. You could tell me he was the drug dealer from Mario Kassar and Andrew J. Vajna. Um, you could tell me James Cameron owed somebody a favor or Cosmatos, any of those guys? We'll never know.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  Wasn't it, isn't it such a great feeling to turn on this movie and first you get that, that horse with the wings running right at you. And the second you see that Mario Kassar, I, I just feel like I'm at home. It's such a name that I, it makes me so fucking happy.

• 29:46Bill Simmons?

  Well, we have a lot of our guys here. Produced by Carol Coe Pictures. You see those names. It's just, it's just like putting on a warm sweatshirt.

• 29:54Speaker 02

  Go time.

• 29:55Bill Simmons?

  Our guys, like literally our guys. Um, still not sure they were real. I'm still not sure that they, they weren't fronts for like some sort of Iranian, um, we'll, we'll never know. We'll never know if those people were even real human beings. Screenplay by Sly Stallone and James Cameron.

• 30:13Speaker 02

  Yep. Mind blower. That James Cameron.

• 30:16Bill Simmons?

  Cameron was hired to write the first draft. He did that at the same time as he was doing Terminator and preparing Aliens. First draft was titled First Blood to the Mission. And then Sly basically took it over and strong-armed it. Sly had a-

• 30:29Speaker 02

  It's an odd pairing, right? Because Cameron is just, he's, he's team Arnold and he's making Terminator and like, he's just in the middle of that, writes with Sly and then apparently went in all kinds of different directions with the script.

• 30:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And he, and it lasted a couple of years where they're making it and, and then his career takes off. He's team Arnold, maybe Sly didn't like that. Sly had kind of a dicky quote about him later.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  Oh, great.

• 30:52Bill Simmons?

  I think that James Cameron is a brilliant talent, but I thought the politics were important, such as a right wing stance coming from Troutman and his nemesis Murdoch, contrasted by Rambo's obviously neutrality, which I believe is explained in Rambo's final speech. So I don't know, Cameron wasn't delivering something for Sly.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  You know what it is, Bill? People get pissed off when you do this podcast and you like shit on the movie. It's like supposed to be like loving the movie. I don't like Sly shitting on this movie. And I feel like we have to fight through that because I love it, you love it. And I'm not here for Sly constantly saying this movie sucks. I don't like it.

• 31:27Bill Simmons?

  Hurts my feelings. He also said Cameron, his initial draft, 30 to 40 pages to have any action initiated. Rambo's partnered with a techie sidekick. Um, and he said it was more than politics put in the script. It was a simpler storyline. Then he says, if James Cameron says anything more than that, then he realizes now doing the backstroke badly in a pool of lies.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  Oh, Christ. That's something Troutman would say about Rambo.

• 31:53Bill Simmons?

  So, so weird. So anyway, we have, he's above, the music score is by our guy Jerry Goldsmith. It's popped up a lot of rewatchables. The final song, Peace in Our Life, is sung by Frank Stallone. We'll get to that later. And then it's directed by George P. Cosmatos, who, uh, did Cobra a year later and I'm not sure if it worked again. It was nominated best sound effects editing in the Oscars. Also nominated for seven categories at the sixth annual Golden Raspberry Awards and one for worst picture. 25.5 million dollar budget. It ultimately made 300.4 million dollars worldwide.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 32:27Bill Simmons?

  It was the first film to appear in 2000 plus US theaters. And it was third biggest movie of 85. Roger Ebert did not do a written review, but he did on his TV show, give it a thumbs up. And, uh,

• 32:40Speaker 02

  And this is the real Roger Ebert.

• 32:41Bill Simmons?

  Real Roger Ebert praised the film's pacing, uh, the lack of political bias, criticized some logical flaws, but said he wasn't bored for a second.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  Not a chance.

• 32:51Bill Simmons?

  And that he enjoyed the film immensely.

• 32:54Speaker 02

  And there's not a shot fired for the first 30 minutes of the movie, but there's a lot of dick swinging and it's a lot of setting up and there's the insertion and the helicopter and all that. It's all action, even though there's no shots fired. It's okay. I'm never bored either.

• 33:06Bill Simmons?

  It's also high to MTV 1985. So you can get away dialogue, no dialogue is okay for as many scenes as you want. Um, we have a lot to cover. Rewatchable categories coming up. We're gonna take one break and come back most rewatchable. This episode is brought to you by Quince. Finding a decent piece of clothing can be a lot harder than finding a decent movie, but that was before Quince. Quince has staple pieces made from premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere and everything is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. It's the perfect place to start building a cozy fall outfit without any absurd markups. For instance, I love a good vest. They have a

• 33:49Bill Simmons?

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• 34:32Bill Simmons?

  Award winner, Martin McDonagh, writer, director of The Banshees of Inisherin and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, set in the 1970s, filmed on location on Easter Island. Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys, Parker Posey and Tom Waits. Wild Horse 9 is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment and easily one of the best films of the year. Don't miss Wild Horse 9, only in theaters November 6th. Get tickets now.

• 35:10Bill Simmons?

  All right. Most rewatchable scene, the opening scene, which also is the Todd Parker Award for best character entrance. Here's Rambo. They set the entire premise up in less than four minutes. We're off. He's, here's Rambo. He's just hammering some rocks. Here's Troutman, Nidja, and here come the credits and here comes Kassar and Vajna. And we're ready to go.

• 35:31Speaker 02

  I love a pre-credit scene so much, especially one, the first fucking frame of this movie is an explosion. It's a giant ass explosion. It tells you what's coming and he walks over and it's all like, can we win this time? And it's like, anyway, you want, yeah. And this Rambo's in fire. It's like getting you fired up like an opening band for the movie. I really like it. And I love that Rambo, working in a prison camp, breaking bricks and rocks, still has just like perfect hair. It's gorgeously conditioned, hot as hell, like always.

• 36:03Bill Simmons?

  He's not sweaty. He's not sunburned.

• 36:05Speaker 02

  Looks awesome.

• 36:07Bill Simmons?

  We get exchanges like, I'm sorry, they sent you to such a hellhole. I've seen worse.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 36:13Bill Simmons?

  Sir, do we get to win this time? This time, it's up to you.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  Mario Kassar and Andrew J. Vajna present.

• 36:23Bill Simmons?

  Great.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  I relate to all that dialogue too. Cause you know, Bill, we got these conflicting networks and merging and stuff, but it's like, when I come on the rewatchables, at least here I know where I stand. You know what I mean? Like this, this is me. I feel good here. Yeah.

• 36:37Bill Simmons?

  Rambo's airplane jump mishap I have here. I don't even know, is this beyond a nitpick? They can't figure out how to get Rambo to jump out of a fucking plane?

• 36:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:47Bill Simmons?

  The number one Green Beret we have. His gear is gonna get stuck.

• 36:52Speaker 02

  Who made these travel plans? Sean McVay?

• 36:56Speaker 02

  It's a disaster from the start. And it's fun, though. It's fun because he cuts loose the weapons.

• 37:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  So they have this thing and he's like, he's cutting free his equipment, sir. And you get these great reaction shots from Troutman and Murdock. And it's like, they're talking to the microphone and Sly's like, oh shit. He's not gonna have any of those guns now or anything. This is gonna be on.

• 37:17Bill Simmons?

  It'll be fine. Yeah. Would you have had this scene before when he meets Murdock and Kreese as a rewatchable scene? I thought about it.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:24Bill Simmons?

  Okay. All right, we'll add that to it. I have more thoughts on that in the next category. Rambo and his new friend Co on the pontoon boat with some of the worst rom com dialogue in a while, including to survive a war, you gotta become a war. And then his long story where he says, I guess I was expendable. And it's like, ah, John Rambo, he's got feelings. She brings that up later. And then she says, what bring you good luck? And he holds up his knife and he says, I guess this.

• 37:59Speaker 02

  It's just.

• 37:59Bill Simmons?

  Great coding. It's like when Harry Met Sower or this, I don't know. It's one or the other.

• 38:03Speaker 02

  It's so hot. And I just, it's so funny that through the eighties, giant knives were these incredible Freudian devices that they would just use. What bring you luck, Rambo? Oh, just this giant metal penis I'm gonna whip out. Like, it's so, there's no subtle to it whatsoever. But it is funny that the killing machine is kind of trying to flirt a little bit. Like, he reaches out and touches her necklace and he's like, this is cute. Like, you know, what's your sign?

• 38:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  He, he, do you watch Vex and Life? He's trying to flirt with her a little bit and I can't blame him.

• 38:34Bill Simmons?

  Do you like Baku Jackson's Throglue?

• 38:39Bill Simmons?

  Pontoon boat again. Pontoon boat goes evil. Rambo kills everyone. Grenade launcher.

• 38:45Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 38:45Bill Simmons?

  Rambo's getting hung from behind after he kills the first six guys, forgets about the seventh guy, breaks away, stabs him through the bed, jumps, and then it cuts to Julia Nixon going, you made it, Rambo.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  And we're on.

• 39:00Bill Simmons?

  And then, uh, then she tells him, Rambo, you're not expendable. It's like, ah.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  It's kind of beautiful.

• 39:06Bill Simmons?

  You kids might make it.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  Meanwhile, he's thinking like, like 30 years from now, I'm gonna make some kind of stupid movies called The Expendables with a bunch of action stars.

• 39:13Bill Simmons?

  Right, that's probably where he got it, right?

• 39:15Speaker 02

  Yes, for sure, he got it there.

• 39:17Bill Simmons?

  Next one, Murdock in the helicopter, guys bone over the Rambo escape. Abort the mission immediately. Get a good Murdock Troutman argument.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  Fucking great. And the shot of Kreese looking up in the helicopter. It's got the energy of when you're in an elevator and someone's running for the elevator and you pretend that you're watching, you're gonna press the close door button a little bit. And you're like, oh, sorry, I missed you. You'll have to get the next one. They just leave him hanging.

• 39:43Bill Simmons?

  Question, I can do this later for unanswered, I'll do it now. Is this a better movie if they push Krena out of the plane?

• 39:51Speaker 02

  And Krena has to join Sly like on the lam?

• 39:54Bill Simmons?

  But he's hurt. He lands, it's like a 20 foot drop, hurts his ankle. So he's gotta limp the whole time and Rambo has to worry about Troutman as well.

• 40:03Speaker 02

  It's not, because he's got the POWs and because I like Troutman going back to Murdock and be like, what the hell are you doing? You just pissed off Rambo.

• 40:11Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  That, you need that moment.

• 40:13Bill Simmons?

  You're the one who's making the mistake? Yeah, what's that? Rambo.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  Rambo.

• 40:17Bill Simmons?

  Evil music.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  So good.

• 40:19Bill Simmons?

  Rambo gets electrocuted by Victor Maitland and Nikola Jokic. I don't know if you realize that was Nikola Jokic as, as the, uh.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  I didn't, it looks like his dad. For sure, Jokic's dad.

• 40:29Bill Simmons?

  That's four time NBA MVP, Nikola Jokic. 2023 Finals MVP, his first movie. He's not credited. But it does get, they give him the microphone. Can you tell these guys where you are? Murdock, lightning. I'm coming to get you. Perfect lightning. That's your favorite scene?

• 40:47Speaker 02

  It, it's, shit, it's up there. Wildly telegraphed punch by Stallone, who has no restraints, no handcuffs. And he does that thing on the mic stand where like, he almost squeezes it to death. And then he hits Jokic's dad with it. And you gotta see that coming. But then all hell breaks loose and the rest of the movie is nuts.

• 41:07Bill Simmons?

  Honestly, a terrible job by them.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  Terrible.

• 41:10Bill Simmons?

  Maybe, maybe at least have his hands tied as he grab, like, why are you just letting him run amok?

• 41:16Speaker 02

  And they even say, leave one of your men here. This is Rambo, dude. You gotta leave more than one Keystone Cop in South Vietnam.

• 41:22Bill Simmons?

  Bad scouting by them. I don't think, I don't think their advanced metrics department really understood what they were dealing with here with Rambo. Next one is Rambo's new girlfriend gets shot 28 times, but not before they kiss.

• 41:35Bill Simmons?

  They get one kiss in. What's sexier, I wrote this down. What's sexier than a guy who hasn't showered or brushed his feet in four days and was also nearly drowned in a pool of feces? It's make out time, baby.

• 41:49Bill Simmons?

  Give me some of that.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  He's still got leeches inside his mouth and he's rounding first next to the river. I got, I got more thoughts. That scene's fucking incredible. And it, let me throw, let me throw a bone to Arnold. Arnold wasn't doing that shit in his movies and the studios would come to him and say, Arnold, we need a love scene. And he'd be like, I'm not doing a love, I'm getting hunted by the predator. I'm not doing, in Commando, they want one. And he's like, my daughter has been abducted. I'm not kissing Redang Chong. Stallone's like, yeah, fuck, go for it, yeah, sure. Make out scene. And also like, when's the last time you think John Rambo kissed a woman? It, it might be a fucking long time. And then she's like, let's go, Rambo. He's like, I don't know, let's stay here. Like, that, that's gotta be a very confusing time for him, too, as this.

• 42:35Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna guess his breath was terrible. Like, she probably was gonna go in for more, but it had to have smelled like just a rancid dead body.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  You, you need Altoid, Rambo. One minute.

• 42:48Bill Simmons?

  Rambo, here, here's some scope.

• 42:51Bill Simmons?

  Rambo murder montage. I just wrote down that one where he just kills everybody because they killed his girlfriend. They shot her 28 times. Somehow she didn't die right away, but she does.

• 43:00Speaker 02

  These are the knife kills where he's going through the jungle.

• 43:02Bill Simmons?

  This is everybody.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  It's the last half an hour of the movie.

• 43:05Bill Simmons?

  It peaks with the mud wall when he's, comes out of the mud and he, uh, and stabs that dude or whatever he does, has no mud on him two seconds later. That, it actually, I take it back. It peaks with the guy who shoots at him 59 times, misses every time. And Rambo starts running and stops, keeps shooting. And Rambo's just taking his time, gets his bow and arrow. Boom. It's, that's where the movie goes to another level of unintentional comedy.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  That mo, that part of that movie is spoofed by Weird Al and UHF, which is hilarious. That's that part. I have an NBA comp for that guy. That guy being unable to shoot Rambo is, uh, Charles Smith under the basket against the Bulls, cannot get the layup in.

• 43:51Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  Over and over, he's got Jordan. You're gonna beat him. You're gonna take the series lead even bigger. This guy tries the rifle. He goes to the sidearm.

• 44:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 44:01Speaker 02

  He can't fucking hit Stallone. And then just boom, and Jordan and Horace and Scotty block the shot. And Charles Smith just can't make the fucking basket.

• 44:09Bill Simmons?

  I blame his ophthalmologist. Obviously, bad contact lenses or whatever's going on with him, just couldn't see anything.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  Make the shot.

• 44:16Bill Simmons?

  And then we get the finish of the slow mo run jump.

• 44:21Bill Simmons?

  Which he does in Cliffhanger and Rambo being underwater, being shot at.

• 44:28Bill Simmons?

  That, they don't realize he's under the helicopter, comes out of the water like Jaws, jumps on the helicopter and kills Nikola Jokic.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  This, this is when the movie is going 200 miles an hour and you can't stop it. And for, for the real Sly heads like you and me, there's bombs going off, there's stabbings. But the part that makes me the happiest is as he's diving to avoid the bomb, he goes, huh, because that's the Sly noise. If you wanna break down Sly versus Arnold with just one note, like Name That Tune, it's huh versus ah. That's all they do. That's their entire career is based in one note. And Sly does some great, when he's hanging out the plane and he takes a parachute.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  And we run out, Arnold's gonna, ah. That's how those guys perform. So they added in the huh. And I'm like, God, I love you, Sly, never change.

• 45:23Bill Simmons?

  So if Sly was in Total Recall and landed outside of Mars.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  On Mars.

• 45:27Bill Simmons?

  And was, he would have been like, uh. He would have gone lower.

• 45:32Speaker 02

  Hey, I'll see you at the party, Rick.

• 45:39Bill Simmons?

  Rambo helicopter bombing, where he lands the water and does the rope a dope and then gets him. But as he's flying the helicopter, he lets out a Sly Stallone scream for some reason. He's just flying, he's like, ah.

• 45:54Speaker 02

  So he's bombing the shit out of the village or just the rockets or whatever. Boom, boom. And like, after seven rockets go, he all but looks to camera and does the side of the mouth scream.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  Fucking awesome. And that's, and I laugh out loud as an adult.

• 46:10Bill Simmons?

  I love it.

• 46:11Speaker 02

  Out loud in my basement. This is why I love movies, to Sly does that shit. It's so gratuitous and it's so awesome.

• 46:17Bill Simmons?

  Then he brings back the POWs.

• 46:19Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 46:19Bill Simmons?

  He does the, uh, thing where he destroys Murdock's office. And everything culminates with, hold on. I gotta get.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  Do it.

• 46:31Bill Simmons?

  I got it. Now I gotta get this ready.

• 46:33Speaker 02

  Do it.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 46:41Bill Simmons?

  I love when he just puts it up.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  It's like, ah. I feel like Cosmatos is like, they had it and he just shot up the office and he's like, we got 10 minutes, let's do one more. And for like the last 30 rounds, just shoot him in the fucking air and scream for no reason. All right, go roll, let's go. It's, it's great.

• 46:58Bill Simmons?

  That's what.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  Best part of, best five seconds of the movie.

• 47:00Bill Simmons?

  That's what Steve Ballmer is gonna do when he finally gets his revenge on Pablo.

• 47:08Bill Simmons?

  And then destroys Murdoch's office and doesn't kill Murdoch.

• 47:12Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 47:12Bill Simmons?

  Does the classic knife next to the head. And then the last rewatchable scene, we have a Frank Stallone song ending.

• 47:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:20Bill Simmons?

  That ends with some really awkward Stallone Troutman dialogue that I'm guessing James Cameron did not write. Don't hate your country for it. Hate, I'd die for it. What do you want? I want what they want and everyone else wants for our country to love us as much as we love, love it. Like they're basically doing First Blood all over again. And we end with, how will you live, John? Day by day.

• 47:42Speaker 02

  Day by day.

• 47:44Bill Simmons?

  And then it just ends and Frank Stallone comes in with a song called Peace in Our Life. And the chorus is, peace in our life, remember the call, oh, a cheer for my brothers. Think of them all, home of the brave, we'll never fail, the strength of our nation belongs to us all.

• 48:03Bill Simmons?

  They're like, hey, Springsteen, Born in the USA is huge. Frank, what's your version? I came up with this song called Peace of Our Life. How about that? Okay, what's the chorus?

• 48:15Speaker 02

  Can you give us like a shitty Kirkland brand version of Bruce Springsteen, Frank? Do you think, Bill, do you think Frank was excited to be included on that project somehow? Like that his little brothers can toss him a bone? Yeah, I pretty much.

• 48:25Bill Simmons?

  I think he's contributed some of the worst movie music in the history of movies. Like his, his arsenal of bad songs is way up there. Somehow it's still not worse than the song that ends First Blood.

• 48:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:36Bill Simmons?

  So to get ready for these, I watched First Blood, which as you know, I love First Blood. I watched it with my son Ben, who loved it. And then it ends and that song comes on and Ben, Ben who's like into this the whole time, like not even on his phone, that song comes on at the end and he goes, dad, what the hell is that? Why did they do that? I'm like, I don't know. And then we watched Rambo two, which he was definitely on his phone a little more for. Same thing. And he's like, why do they do this at the end of these movies? I was like, I don't know.

• 49:03Speaker 02

  They go with this like weird melancholy track.

• 49:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 49:06Speaker 02

  After you've just had like, I don't know, poison hair metal for 90 minutes. And then they ended on this down. And also it's weird because Rambo just starts walking to nowhere. He's not going anywhere. It's like he's walking away from the song. I, I don't know.

• 49:20Bill Simmons?

  He's going to a Starbucks.

• 49:23Bill Simmons?

  Maybe he's going to get some toothpaste. So what is your most rewatchable scene? Tough question.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  The, the thing that blew my mind the most as a kid, I couldn't believe what I was looking at when he was buried in the mud and comes out and his eye opens.

• 49:36Bill Simmons?

  The burger montage, yeah.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  It's, it's when it comes, it becomes a slasher movie for about five minutes. It's that.

• 49:41Bill Simmons?

  They basically took First Blood when he runs amok and the, and starts taking guys out and they're like, how can we just do a way better version of this where he actually kills people? What's the most 1985 thing about this movie? I will give you Martin Cove. I will give you Victor Maitland. I will give you a movie ending with a Frank Stallone song or a character saying, do we get to win this time?

• 50:03Speaker 02

  I want to say Cove of the ones you had. The thing that hit, that popped for me is there's this really dramatic moment when they rescue the POW and he's like, what year is it? And he's like, 1985. And it has this big impact, like that year is supposed to really mean something.

• 50:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 50:19Speaker 02

  So that, the fact that they name dropped their own year, it's almost like saying the name of the, of the movie.

• 50:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's a good point.

• 50:25Speaker 02

  You said what year it is. I also think that scene needed just like, give me 30 seconds of levity where the POW is like, wow, 1985. Holy shit, what have I missed? And Rambo's like, you gotta see what John Thompson's building at Georgetown. It's fucking incredible. I gotta get you out of here so you can see jaws. He's missed a lot. We just need a little bit of that.

• 50:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I was thinking if I was the POW and I get out, I'm like, what year is it? 1985. My next two questions would have been, did the Red Sox win the World Series? No. Did the Celtics win any titles? Yeah, you won in 84. I'd be like, fuck yeah. 84, really? We did?

• 51:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:03Bill Simmons?

  How about the Pats? I just would have gone through all the teams.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  Well, the Pats were about to go to the Super Bowl too. In 85.

• 51:10Bill Simmons?

  The Bees, did we get to the cup? No? All right, how's my family?

• 51:15Bill Simmons?

  The Floyd Gondoli butter in my ass, lollipops in my mouth, the word for something I just enjoy. What do you got here?

• 51:21Speaker 02

  I, I got two. I will never turn off a knife sharpening scene, fucking ever, just like.

• 51:29Speaker 02

  And it's, he does this same shot in Cobra.

• 51:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  Where the night stalker is sharpening his knife.

• 51:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 51:34Speaker 02

  It's like sweaty, ripped forearms and just slow sharpening of the knife little by little. It's always cinematic, it's always hot. But the other one I have with a bill, you know, you know how the kids these days, they, they talk about aura farming and you're, Joe Burrow's always aura farming. In 1985, a movie was aura farming. Anytime the hero held a huge machine gun with the bullet straps out to the side in his other hand and just shoots them, that was the coolest pose to do. The Jordan logo silhouette thing like was coming, but the holding your own bullet straps as you just blast them all over was so fucking cool. And he does it a bunch of times.

• 52:13Bill Simmons?

  Shot down to the ground of all the caps from the bullets, then back to.

• 52:17Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 52:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, I'm with you. I love that.

• 52:19Speaker 02

  And then he tosses the rifle at the end like it's a bat flip and walks to find Murdoch. Those are, I'm always gonna be happy, butter in my ass, knife sharpening and holding your own bullet straps.

• 52:28Bill Simmons?

  Mine is one I've mentioned before, but bad guys shooting basically point blank at our stars and not being able to draw any iron, just shooting airballs. It always makes me laugh. I always enjoy the geometry of it, how they have to hide it with the camera angles. Cause you want the guys somewhat close together, but it also has to be believable that they're just far away enough that they would have missed these shots. But it's, you know, it's 20 feet away and they're just boom, boom. Can't hit anything, really ridiculous. What's age the best?

• 52:59Bill Simmons?

  What you choose to call hell, he calls home.

• 53:04Bill Simmons?

  One of those rare lines that also could have worked in any Halloween movie.

• 53:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:08Bill Simmons?

  Like it could have, it was a horror movie or an action movie line, pretty great. I also had, uh, having a true villain for movies. In the eighties, like you just saw the Russian name, you saw the Russian letters, 40 minutes in, you're like, oh boy, the Russians?

• 53:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:24Bill Simmons?

  Oh shit. We're, they're involved?

• 53:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 53:28Bill Simmons?

  I don't know who that is now. We just have too many villains. I don't even know, there, there's nothing like that of the immediate impact of seeing the Russian letters.

• 53:36Speaker 02

  No, now it's like the machines are gonna kill us all. Like that's, it's, but there's a moment in that movie where the POWs are like, Russian motherfuckers. And the Russians make an entrance like on their helicopter and their camouflage and it jumps, it's like an okay motherfucker, jump up a notch moment.

• 53:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Nikolai Volkov's there, he's making everyone stand for the national anthem.

• 53:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 53:55Bill Simmons?

  I have a couple more, but what do you have for what's age the best?

• 53:57Speaker 02

  It's Troutman. I love Troutman and I have a take on it. Troutman is really just a pro wrestling manager. He's there to rep his guy. He's there to hype his guy. He is. For this whole movie, Troutman's like, let me tell you something, Mean Gene, Rambo's the best combat vet I've ever seen. The million dollar man Ted DiBiase is gonna learn he's a pure fighting machine. And if winning the Intercontinental Belt means he has to die in that ring, he will die. SummerSlam, what you call hell, he calls home. He's constantly doing it.

• 54:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 54:28Speaker 02

  And Troutman has all these quippy one lighters about Rambo, you know, that like, you're not hunting him, he's hunting you. I feel like he workshops them.

• 54:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  I feel like he's got like a tape recorder for all his Rambo lines. I just love how he reps John and he speaks in these sound bites and he calls him Johnny. I love the Troutman character.

• 54:46Bill Simmons?

  The first time we see him, he comes in, cause somebody's like, something about God and it's like, God didn't make Rambo, I did. That's his entrance. First line of the series.

• 54:57Speaker 02

  If I was gonna fly a little closer to the sun, my next hotter take would be that secretly Troutman is in love with Rambo.

• 55:03Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 55:04Speaker 02

  And I'd go into that. But you know what, Bill? After the Karate Kid two pod, I had so many people on my Instagram comments being like, you guys are crazy about Miyagi and La Russa. Like you take it too far, man. You guys are nuts. I had so many comments about that. And like, Bill and I think it's kind of strange that like a high school kid's only friend is an old man who builds a bedroom for him and travels around the world. And yeah, I'm not gonna apologize for that.

• 55:25Bill Simmons?

  I got a long email from somebody who was basically like, you don't understand the pain of losing a father and Miyagi filled that void for him. Blah, blah, blah. I'm like, or it's fucking weird that these two guys have got all the time.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  Among the comments, I got, the only thing weird here is you two weirdos. Then it's, how sick do you have to be? And then my favorite one, gay guys are always looking for gay stuff. And then he goes on to say that you and I quote, definitely have puffed a few pickles.

• 55:57Speaker 02

  And I'm like, that's that guy's Instagram comment for the day. We're just talking karate kid too. You go with it where you want. So screw it. I think Troutman is in love with Rambo.

• 56:07Bill Simmons?

  You think he puffed for it most pickle?

• 56:09Speaker 02

  This guy does.

• 56:12Bill Simmons?

  I have a couple more. What's age the best for me? Cameron's original screenplay began with Troutman finding Rambo in a psychiatric hospital instead of a prison. And it ended up getting changed to the prison. Piled it away, used it for Terminator two.

• 56:28Speaker 02

  Sarah Connor doing pull ups in the, in the room. Sure. That would have worked.

• 56:32Bill Simmons?

  Hotshots part two.

• 56:34Speaker 02

  Let's go.

• 56:34Bill Simmons?

  A fairly funny movie, but they get a lot of, they basically take everything that's in Rambo anyway, which was funny and dial it up a notch. But I thought, I actually thought UHF probably did it better.

• 56:46Speaker 02

  UHF does it beautifully. I love that part of the movie.

• 56:49Bill Simmons?

  Here's my number one though. So Rambo meets Murdoch.

• 56:55Bill Simmons?

  I just personally love reading the resume scenes to set the place.

• 56:59Speaker 02

  Oh, so do I. Do this.

• 57:00Bill Simmons?

  And he does the Rambo, John Jay. Born July 6th, 1947. Indian, German descent, joined army and just goes through helicopter and language qualified 59 confirmed kills. I was thinking what a mistake it was that we didn't do this the first time you were on the rewatchables where I was like Kyle Brandt. Princeton football, real world, Chicago, worked for Jim Rome for nine years. Good morning football with Peter Schreger. Now it's here. I'm going to start reading the resume for everybody that comes on.

• 57:33Speaker 02

  And you look at me like skeptically over your glasses. You say, care to explain why you never did the real world challenge, son? And I'm like, well, it was a tough time life, sir. A dark time.

• 57:42Bill Simmons?

  Were you afraid of CT? What was going on there?

• 57:45Speaker 02

  Anytime a character says, I've been looking over your file, you're about to get some good shit.

• 57:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So they say 59 confirmed kills, two silver star, four bronze, four purple hearts. Distinguished server, service cross and a medal of honor. Solid, solid resume. I was kind of expecting a little bit more. If this guy's the Michael Jordan of American killing machines, I was expecting like 559 kills.

• 58:11Speaker 02

  Well, doesn't, doesn't he about to have his 63 point game against the Celtics in the garden? Because this is coming now, right?

• 58:18Bill Simmons?

  Good point. Um, great shot, Gordon award, most cinematic shot. I don't know, probably the knife sharpening or when he's tying the bandana on with his oiled muscles.

• 58:28Speaker 02

  That, I think the bandana shot is the most giftable. I think the greatest shot is the Russian soldier and over his, over his shoulder, the eye just opens in the mud. And you like, as a kid, it's the coolest thing you've ever seen.

• 58:38Bill Simmons?

  It's a good call.

• 58:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:39Bill Simmons?

  Hans Gruber skill villain ranking. Petro, Petrovikov, whatever his name was.

• 58:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:46Bill Simmons?

  Probably a two out of 10 for me. I don't feel like they really developed that character at all. I didn't really believe the Russian accent either.

• 58:53Speaker 02

  He had my interest when we were talking about putting a smoldering knife inside of POW's eyeball.

• 58:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 58:58Speaker 02

  But then he didn't have the balls to do it. The, the real Gruber would have immediately put it in one of his eyes and says, now tell me or I'll do the second one. That's how you get them. So pretty live, like three, five.

• 59:07Bill Simmons?

  I left you one. Murdoch, I think is a seven or a seven and a half though.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  How come?

• 59:13Bill Simmons?

  Lies about where he served in Nam in 66.

• 59:17Speaker 02

  Stolen valor.

• 59:18Bill Simmons?

  Lies about the mission, lies to Troutman, leaves Rambo just to die with the POWs.

• 59:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:25Bill Simmons?

  And he's just trying to save his ass left and right. So.

• 59:28Speaker 02

  Leaving.

• 59:29Bill Simmons?

  Hannibal Lecter took care of him later.

• 59:32Speaker 02

  Yes. That's true. I wonder if there's some expanded universe where that's Murdoch and like he went into law enforcement after he left.

• 59:39Bill Simmons?

  Oh, this is great. Murdoch gets kicked out of the military. And then just becomes a security guard in whatever city that was, Chicago.

• 59:48Speaker 02

  Baltimore.

• 59:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Kid Cudi pursuit of happiness award for best needle drop. We don't really have one, but I do have a new award. And I'm putting this in the category list. The Frank Stallone award for worst needle drop.

• 1:00:02Speaker 02

  Perfect. Perfect.

• 1:00:03Bill Simmons?

  Frank, Frank makes the rundown. If you hear Frank, it's probably not going to be good. With that said, I do enjoy the staying alive song.

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's fine.

• 1:00:12Bill Simmons?

  Da da, da da, da da.

• 1:00:15Speaker 02

  He made contact a few times.

• 1:00:17Bill Simmons?

  Not bad. Was there a better title for this movie? So we could have gone first blood two, we could have gone Rambo two. Instead we did Rambo first blood part two. To set up because Stallone wanted the third one to be called Rambo three. I honestly, nobody calls this movie Rambo first blood part two. Not one person.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  I remember as a kid being confused about it. Why isn't it just Rambo two?

• 1:00:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:40Speaker 02

  Again, I, I think Rocky, Rocky slides like, I need the title of the movie to be my character, like, like I am with Rocky. And we're going to make that right on the second one. And it was probably smart. Just call it Rambo two.

• 1:00:50Bill Simmons?

  What do you have for a flex category?

• 1:00:54Speaker 02

  Uh, all right. Well, I had a couple of options. I was going to repurpose the Judd Nelson guy who's in his own movie and doing his own thing. Into the Romeo Dobbs guy who's in his own game and doing his own thing. And we're not sure what planet he's on. I was going to do that one for you, buddy. But instead, I mean, it's sitting right there. Somebody's got to do it. I, I got the Elizabeth shoe inventing cold fusion award. Uh, for our girl co, listen. Yes, of course. An attractive woman could be in the military in South Vietnam. This girl is outrageously hot with an Uzi in the jungle and they do this thing where they, they get her in an evening gown and makeup because she poses as a prostitute to get in the camp.

• 1:01:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:35Speaker 02

  And then she's in that for the rest of her life. And wouldn't you also, speaking of files? Don't you think Troutman might've said to, to Rambo that like, by the way, you know, this, this contact you're going to have, she's great at covert ops and, and, and infantry weapons. But I gotta tell you, Johnny, this problem is a real looker. I mean, a full smoke stack, Johnny. Like there's nothing in that about it. They even tipped it off. She's like a model they found in Hawaii and God bless her. She had a long career. But she's disarmingly attractive as this person in the middle of the jungle running around.

• 1:02:08Bill Simmons?

  I fully support the casting. I think if you're going to nitpick, I feel like everybody in the jungle would have remembered her at some point. Right?

• 1:02:17Speaker 02

  You don't forget her.

• 1:02:18Bill Simmons?

  In the jungle message boards, they're like, yo, there's this one, this lady co, just a smoke show. Just watch out for her.

• 1:02:26Speaker 02

  Lady co stuns in Uzi chic.

• 1:02:30Speaker 02

  Serving tea.

• 1:02:31Bill Simmons?

  Butch's girlfriend award, weak link of the film. We could have gone with what you just said. I, the bigger thing is Rambo just should have died in multiple scenes in this movie, including when he comes back after the aborted helicopter escape and all the guys come in closer to him. But they capture him instead of just shooting him when they've been shooting at him for the last five minutes.

• 1:02:52Speaker 02

  I know, I know.

• 1:02:53Bill Simmons?

  I don't understand why the Russians didn't kill them. Why didn't they bound his hands? Why nobody was able to shoot him when he's basically one against 200? And he just never even gets like a, like a, like a bullet, like glancing his arm, nothing. Nobody touches him.

• 1:03:10Speaker 02

  Is, is, there's one point where Co's like, oh, you heard bad. And it's like, not really. He just had 50 guys shoot at him. He's fine. There's a, it's a really cumbersome thing that the Russians are trying to get him to radio in. That he's not here and don't come. It, it doesn't make a lot of sense. They probably should have just.

• 1:03:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that part. Oh, that's not great. What's age the worst? Oh, go.

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  No, I, I got butchered. You're going to love the weak link. The ending of the movie is not satisfying enough. First of all, Murdoch doesn't really get any justice. And then more importantly,

• 1:03:41Speaker 02

  there should have been a fight between Rambo and Kreese. And I'm thinking maybe a knife fight or a fist fight because Kreese is Kreese. They don't like each other from the beginning. And I think it could have had one of those real like Mel Gibson versus Gary Busey on the lawn or Dalton versus Jimmy where it's like, Rambo, I always wanted to try you, you know? And then he like, he gets the upper hand on me. It's just like, you're not so bad, Rambo. You know, like we needed that fight. And I also think we needed a better fight between Nikola Jokic and, and Rambo on the helicopter. Cause he does, the Russian doesn't speak at all. And I was thinking that like, at one point during the fight, when he has the upper hand on Rambo and he's like, maybe has a knife to his throat.

• 1:04:23Speaker 02

  I just think he gets right in Rambo's ear and he says, I used to fuck guys like you in Gulag.

• 1:04:30Speaker 02

  And that would be like, oh shit, now we got something.

• 1:04:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:33Speaker 02

  More fights and killing at the end, I think where Rambo gets avenged. I mean, he like punches Kreese and that's it. It's kind of dumb.

• 1:04:40Bill Simmons?

  It's a really great point about Kreese. I think the solution would have been, cause he, he lands on the plane with the POWs. And he goes to find Murdoch, but Kreese greets him.

• 1:04:50Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:04:50Bill Simmons?

  And it was like, good to see you alive or whatever he said. And Rambo punches him in the stomach and then knocks him out. I think the move maybe is he goes by everybody and goes to see Murdoch, but Kreese is in the way.

• 1:05:02Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 1:05:03Bill Simmons?

  And it's just the two of them and they have like a little like fight in the, uh, you know, in the first room before he gets to Murdoch. Might've been. Move then we could have seen some karate. Kreese could have done some. You know.

• 1:05:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, imagine if he did all that at Cbrook High shit, that would be great. And then the craziest thing is that William Zab, cause they're two.

• 1:05:21Bill Simmons?

  Right, for no reason, yeah. Holding his, holding his second place trophy.

• 1:05:26Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:05:27Bill Simmons?

  What's Age the Worst?

• 1:05:30Bill Simmons?

  This was devastating. This is in the research, Co was killed. Rambo's holding her. And if you watch it, it cuts pretty quickly away. Apparently. They ran this movie for the test audiences. Co dies and Rambo's holding her. And then he goes, no, no. And screams no three times. And the camera zooms out. And apparently the test audiences thought this was absolutely hysterical.

• 1:06:00Speaker 02

  Oh, put it in.

• 1:06:00Bill Simmons?

  And we're laughing. So I looked for this this morning, I was looking for it all over the place. Does, Stallone has destroyed all copies, but so they kind of abruptly cut away from her dying. And it was because of the three no's that made test audiences laugh their asses off. And I can't think of anything you and I would have enjoyed more.

• 1:06:17Speaker 02

  Bill, I, I was moved when you just did it right now, like I, I was into that. I, we need that. And they, if they had to know now, the stuff that the audience is laughing at, keep that in. That's the good stuff, guys.

• 1:06:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, this is a comedy action movie.

• 1:06:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:06:32Bill Simmons?

  There was a tie in video game called Rambo, produced for basically all the systems, they had to say it's a bad video game. Really disappointing. I don't understand why they, how they fucked that one up. Cause this is as video games were, you know, starting to get better. And this is a pretty easy, drop this guy, he has a mission, now he's going to complete that. I don't understand how they, how they botched that one.

• 1:06:53Speaker 02

  Typically it's, it's timeframe based, they have to rush it to get out in time with the movie.

• 1:06:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  The better video game legacy for this movie is a great game called Akari Warriors. That they made on Nintendo and you could play side by side and the guys all looked like Rambo with the headbands and stuff. But they, the IP wasn't directly linked or it was and then fell off. But the Rambo game you're talking about sucked, I had it.

• 1:07:15Bill Simmons?

  The only other thing I had for What's Age the Worst is I, you know, I'm a big fan of the Michigan Action franchise, Chuck Norris.

• 1:07:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:22Bill Simmons?

  Missing in Action one is effectively the plot for this movie. And it comes out a year before. And then Missing in Action two comes out same year as this movie. Which are prequel, we go back to see how he escapes.

• 1:07:35Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:07:37Bill Simmons?

  Now, James Cameron started working on the script in eighty-three, Missing in Action. I'm not accusing plagiarism here, I'm just saying that Missing in Action one came out and was basically the same plot as this movie. This is just a thing that happened.

• 1:07:50Speaker 02

  Um, there was a lot of copying of homework going on right now, a lot.

• 1:07:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Uh, what do you have for What's Age the Worst, anything?

• 1:07:57Speaker 02

  A lot we covered, uh, obviously, you know, listen, the depiction of the Viet Cong, the exploitation of the POWs, the characterization of Vietnamese. You know what stage is the worst? The mortars. There's a great mortar scene and they're very cinematic, but like in the mid eighties to still be using it. You got two people running through this valley. They're not even hitting them with the mortar, these guys can't hit them with a gun. What makes you think they're going to be able to do the geometry and the trajectory of basically what amounts to like war cornhole? If the target was moving, great cinematic stuff. It is, but like not effective weaponry by the mid eighties, you gotta leave that behind.

• 1:08:31Bill Simmons?

  Ruffalo Hen and Rubenek, Partridge Over acting award, we covered this earlier. It's now the Slas, the Rambo two under acting award. The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford hottest take award.

• 1:08:44Bill Simmons?

  I think this is my hottest take in a while.

• 1:08:46Speaker 02

  Let's go.

• 1:08:47Bill Simmons?

  And as you know, I love this movie.

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:49Bill Simmons?

  Rambo two. Nineteen eighty-five Vietnam movies. I think I've watched Missing in Action two more times than Rambo two.

• 1:08:57Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:08:58Bill Simmons?

  I'm a huge Missing in Action two guy. It has one of the random great scenes of the entire eighties at the end.

• 1:09:04Speaker 02

  What's the scene?

• 1:09:04Bill Simmons?

  Chuck Norris has to, basically this really evil guy is torturing him and the other POWs. He's just like the worst guy. And at the end, they just end in this cabin. And it's just the two of them and they just have this fight to the death. And it's one of the best fight to the deaths of that whole decade and maybe the last forty-five years. The movie itself's not that good, but the fight to the death, it's like, this is like the end of Karate Kid multiplied by a hundred. And Chuck like that, this is a really good scene. And I just feel like I've watched that scene more times than any scene in this movie, even though I've probably seen this movie twenty times.

• 1:09:41Speaker 02

  I just, I feel like I'm letting you down, I've not seen that movie. It's, I, I wish I could be there for you, buddy.

• 1:09:45Bill Simmons?

  It was a cable rewatchable, it was just on a lot for like a year and it would always suck me in. But, um, what do you have for a hottest take?

• 1:09:53Speaker 02

  Well, I'm going to watch that movie and I'm, I'm going to watch the movie where Troutman gets raped. So I got a full weekend ahead of me.

• 1:09:58Bill Simmons?

  The rape of Richard Beck, yeah, go hunt that down on YouTube.

• 1:10:01Speaker 02

  All right, here's a movie you've seen. Um, we're talking Sly versus Schwarzenegger, we're talking all their great movies in the mid eighties. Predator is probably in my top five movies ever made. Dude. Predator rips off Rambo two big time. Let me run it down, big time, here we go. We travel to a faraway jungle that is actually shot in Mexico. The best in the business arrives with an older officer there. He immediately sniffs out the bureaucrat who's wearing the tie. There's a nighttime insertion into the jungle and something goes immediately wrong. They arrive at a village, there's hostages, there's a shootout, there's an indigenous woman who becomes an ally. Then he loses all his modern weapons and has to resort to a bow and arrow. He covers himself in mud to conceal himself from the enemy. There's these other, other primitive MacGyver type weapons.

• 1:10:46Speaker 02

  And at the end of the movie, when he's got the bad guy dead to rights, he has the weapon over his hand and then he drops it and decides not to kill him. There's a lot of Sly getting his homework copied by Schwarzenegger and I am a Predator guy. And we did Predator years ago, you, me, Shay and CR. But to the note, I feel like Predator just had its hand in this Rambo two cookie jar.

• 1:11:08Bill Simmons?

  It's a compelling case.

• 1:11:09Speaker 02

  It's a lot, the covering in mud and everything and the guy in the tie, it's, it's very close.

• 1:11:14Bill Simmons?

  Really speaks to the rivalry.

• 1:11:16Speaker 02

  That's what I'm saying, yeah.

• 1:11:17Bill Simmons?

  Like not only do I not like you, I'm going to steal some stuff from your movie. Casting what ifs.

• 1:11:24Bill Simmons?

  There's three mediocre ones and then a really good one.

• 1:11:27Speaker 02

  Oh, I can't wait.

• 1:11:28Bill Simmons?

  Dolph Lundgren was initially Podolsky. Stallone realized he was also going to be Drago, pulled him.

• 1:11:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:35Bill Simmons?

  Lee Marvin was supposed to be Colonel Troutman in the first film, turned it down.

• 1:11:40Bill Simmons?

  Turned down Murdoch for the second one, they really wanted Lee Marvin and it ends up being Charles Napier. And then, uh, they were filming a lot of this movie in Mexico where there were really no Asian actors. They had to go to Chinese restaurants. And get people working those restaurants as extras in the local Chinese restaurants. But this one was amazing. The Carol Co producers are guys.

• 1:12:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:04Bill Simmons?

  They really wanted Rambo to have a partner for the POW rescue mission. They wanted John Travolta.

• 1:12:10Speaker 02

  Stop.

• 1:12:11Bill Simmons?

  To play Rambo's sidekick.

• 1:12:13Speaker 02

  Is that true?

• 1:12:14Bill Simmons?

  And Stallone vetoed the idea. Cause they were buddies from Staying Alive. Can you, yo, what is going on here? Like he's like Vinnie Barberino in Vietnam with Rambo. By the way, I think I want to see that movie.

• 1:12:29Speaker 02

  Hey Johnny, like show's kind of foxy, right?

• 1:12:33Speaker 02

  Oh my God.

• 1:12:35Bill Simmons?

  Co's giving me the googly eyes.

• 1:12:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was going to be a scene, I don't know if you know this, uh, they're walking through the jungle and the, uh, Rambo's buddy's like, Hey Johnny, uh, you know what they call a quarter pounder with cheese in Ho Chi Minh City? I don't call it a quarter pounder with cheese. Nah, man, they got the metric system, you know, they know what the fucking quarter pounder is. It's just back and forth buddy humor.

• 1:12:56Bill Simmons?

  I think it's a better movie. I've been on it.

• 1:12:58Speaker 02

  That's awesome.

• 1:13:00Bill Simmons?

  Joey Pantsawear, Best That Guy, we going Steven Berkoff or Charles Napier?

• 1:13:06Speaker 02

  I don't think I knew his name was Charles Napier. I, I don't, I know his work very well, but I don't think if you ask me what is this actor's name, I would know it. Also like, I think it's Napier because he shows up in The Cable Guy and he's a cop in blues, just playing his Silence of the Lambs character as like a joke. I think it's Napier, but if you know his name that well, that means he's not a bad guy.

• 1:13:27Bill Simmons?

  More important movie. Uh, or more important part in the movie. Dionne Waiters award, I mean, it's done, it's Indoor Aviators guy.

• 1:13:34Speaker 02

  Steve Williams, Steve Williams is life, forget about it.

• 1:13:37Bill Simmons?

  When he doesn't let Trump and leave and he just puts his leg on the chair to block him.

• 1:13:41Speaker 02

  Awesome, yes.

• 1:13:42Bill Simmons?

  Loved it. And then, uh, recasting couch director city, obviously Travolta is the answer. I have a recasting song.

• 1:13:51Speaker 02

  Oh, for the end?

• 1:13:52Bill Simmons?

  For the end. What if they just kicks it in a Born in the USA by Springsteen? As he's walking away, that would have been fucking incredible.

• 1:14:01Bill Simmons?

  And he's just walking through?

• 1:14:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:06Speaker 02

  Um, that would have been awesome. I don't know if Bruce would have signed off on that, but geez.

• 1:14:12Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna say Bruce would not have signed off. Anyway, um, okay, we're gonna take one more break and then, uh, finish the pod. This episode is brought to you by The Home Depot. The Home Depot has everything you need to launch your holiday season in style. Upgrade your yard with this year's hottest holiday decor, including the showstopping towering Santa. Oh, I like that one. And his impressive reindeer, both 8.5 feet and both designed with incredible detail that stands out day or night. When you want decor that delivers impact, The Home Depot has it. Make your home Santa's favorite stop with the holiday decor you want. All waiting for you at The Home Depot.

• 1:14:46Speaker 03

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• 1:15:12Speaker 04

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• 1:15:16Speaker 05

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• 1:16:11Speaker 06

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• 1:16:17Bill Simmons?

  All right, so Craig's not with us today because he's traveling, so he didn't get his flex category. But we are gonna go right to half-assed internet research. Film was shot in, uh, Mexico and Thailand. Sadly, a special effects guy was accidentally killed during one of the waterfall explosions. Cliff Wenger, uh, lost his footing and fell to his death, so sorry about that. Video was released in early 86, sold 425,000 units on opening day.

• 1:16:43Speaker 02

  Let's go.

• 1:16:44Bill Simmons?

  Um, we should mention, those movies were $80 back then?

• 1:16:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:49Bill Simmons?

  This is-

• 1:16:50Speaker 02

  When they would come out to buy, they would make them impossibly expensive for some reason, but that's just how it was for a while.

• 1:16:55Bill Simmons?

  Cause they wanted, uh, you to rent them, I guess. So anyway.

• 1:16:58Speaker 02

  But sometimes you'd run through that stop sign, just fucking buy it. I don't care what, I'm getting Rambo too.

• 1:17:02Bill Simmons?

  So they, uh, they, they broke the record set by Ghostbusters. Film was banned in the Soviet Union? Fucking cowards. Um, at the time of the films, time of the filming, we still had 2,500 real-life Vietnam POWs.

• 1:17:17Speaker 02

  Sorry to hear that.

• 1:17:19Bill Simmons?

  Uh, this, I'm just gonna read this verbatim, cause this was in the research.

• 1:17:23Speaker 02

  Let's do it.

• 1:17:25Bill Simmons?

  Many funny things happened during the shoot, including Stallone getting pantsed by Krena during an interview by Maria Shriver. As retaliation slide through a cream pie in Krena's face during his respective interview. Also mud fights between the actors were common. I have no idea if this is true.

• 1:17:44Speaker 02

  I, I just, he was on the hot seat right now as the Steven Seagal shitting on himself award for most unbelievable onset story.

• 1:17:50Bill Simmons?

  That might have, that could have been in the category, I guess. I probably should have put that as a Seagal.

• 1:17:55Speaker 02

  Krena doesn't strike me as the pantsing type of, of, of knucklehead.

• 1:17:59Bill Simmons?

  Maybe he was really the rape of Richard Beck. Maybe he was really going through something. Trying, trying to-

• 1:18:04Speaker 02

  Or maybe it was Maria Shriver and Stallone wanted to be pantsed.

• 1:18:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, maybe Stallone asked her, who knows?

• 1:18:10Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:18:10Bill Simmons?

  What'd you think was the body count of this movie?

• 1:18:13Speaker 02

  Well, doesn't he say he has 50 some confirmed kills, like in his entire military, before this? If he'd already had, let's say 56 or whatever the number is, it's like 40 maybe?

• 1:18:27Bill Simmons?

  85 total, 74 from Rambo.

• 1:18:31Speaker 02

  Holy shit.

• 1:18:33Bill Simmons?

  I think the grenade launchers from the helicopter, um, probably, yeah, probably padded the numbers a little bit. Apex Mountain sliced alone. It's either this or Rocky IV, but where he's on the mountain, literally and figuratively, because he's climbing the mountain in Rocky IV doing, "Drago!"

• 1:18:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, and same year.

• 1:18:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So it's, it's 85. This is about as Apex Mountain as it gets. Vietnam movies?

• 1:19:00Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna say no, I'm gonna say late 70s for quality and then I think honestly Platoon winning the Oscar.

• 1:19:08Speaker 02

  He won the best picture Oscar.

• 1:19:09Bill Simmons?

  I, I don't know, that's not Apex Mountain, right?

• 1:19:12Speaker 02

  I know. I, I, I think it's Platoon, and I know people go hard for some of the ones in the 70s, but I, I think it's Platoon.

• 1:19:17Bill Simmons?

  Plus, after that, we get Full Metal Jacket, we get Casualty's Award, we're still going all the way through the 80s. Ronald Reagan, this, this might have been Apex Mountain for him right here. Second term. Rambo, he's battling the Russians, his popularity is probably never higher. He's still relatively healthy, I think, so I would say him.

• 1:19:37Speaker 02

  I was, I was gonna, I was gonna go, well, I was gonna say Uncle Sam.

• 1:19:40Bill Simmons?

  Uncle Sam, yeah, Uncle Sam and Ronald Reagan.

• 1:19:42Speaker 02

  Is this it? Like, our, United States of America, are we there?

• 1:19:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we just cleaned up in the Summer Olympics, we're-

• 1:19:48Speaker 02

  Come on.

• 1:19:49Bill Simmons?

  Battling Russia.

• 1:19:50Speaker 02

  McDonald's, drinking Coca-Cola, Mary Lou Retton's everywhere, is every movie's pretty good.

• 1:19:54Bill Simmons?

  Michael Jordan's here.

• 1:19:55Speaker 02

  Let's go, 85 Bears.

• 1:19:57Bill Simmons?

  Julian Nixon, yes. The Cold War. I mean, you have this and then you have Rocky IV, six months later, plus all the other things I mentioned. I, I do feel like this is probably the peak, 85. We were still afraid of a nuclear war, but having fun with it.

• 1:20:13Speaker 02

  I think what hurts the case here is there's no nuke talk in this movie, not that I can think of, and nuke talk was everywhere there.

• 1:20:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Grenade launchers, that's, I don't really have any of their Apex Mountain stuff. Um, oh, Martin Cove?

• 1:20:28Speaker 02

  No, no, I think it's, I think it's still-

• 1:20:30Bill Simmons?

  Kid One, okay.

• 1:20:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. But we've had this conversation, is this Apex Mountain for knives in movies? Because knives were really fucking hot at this time, and hear me out. Crocodile Dundee did a whole thing with knives and they have a whole scene about, that's not a knife, that's a knife. I almost think it might be Paul Hogan a year later, one-upping, even Rambo's knife is iconic.

• 1:20:52Bill Simmons?

  Well, so that would tie into Cobra too then. So Cobra and Crocodile Dundee together. Yeah, that's, so we're a year away. We're setting up Apex Mountain for knives. Still a year away. And plus, we had the Ginsu ads at this point.

• 1:21:06Speaker 02

  Big time, huge.

• 1:21:08Bill Simmons?

  Cruise or Hank's Cruise?

• 1:21:11Speaker 02

  I think Cruise, somewhere when this movie's being shot, he's on the set of Legends with Ridley Scott, and he sees Rambo hanging on the side of a plane. He's like, yes, someday, Sylvester Stallone, thank you. And he was like, someday that's what I'm gonna do. And Ridley Scott's like, get over there, kid.

• 1:21:29Bill Simmons?

  Files it away.

• 1:21:30Speaker 02

  Fired up.

• 1:21:31Bill Simmons?

  The Borat Sagidov Rancid Body Odor Award.

• 1:21:35Speaker 02

  So glad to hear it.

• 1:21:36Bill Simmons?

  Um, normally you'd give it to Rambo here after dangling in a pool of sewage, but no, it's gotta be his POW buddy. Who, he carries on his shoulders and I, Rambo probably has no sense of smell left, I'm guessing at that point, but there's-

• 1:21:54Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:21:54Bill Simmons?

  No way, uh, I, I'm just, I don't think anyone smells good in this movie, honestly. I think you could give it across the board. Maybe Co smells okay, um, but for the most part, we're just in a hot jungle, there's no showers, there's sewage everywhere. I just think it's a, it's a nasal frenzy.

• 1:22:11Speaker 02

  Can you first, first of all, imagine that poor bastard POW who's been having rats and spiders on him for how many, how many years? He gets freed and the first person he runs into is Co? And she, she's like, holy shit, where did you come from? Am I hallucinating? Also, to the body odor, I could make, the hot take is that I think Murdoch might have smelled worse than the POW.

• 1:22:30Bill Simmons?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:22:31Speaker 02

  Cause she's wildly perspirating for the entire movie.

• 1:22:34Bill Simmons?

  True, he's got the big sweat patches.

• 1:22:36Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Like, that's his little move, he's patting himself. I don't think there's a lot of speed stick around there.

• 1:22:41Bill Simmons?

  I like that. So you have Murdoch, Fandel odds are that he was 20 to one smelliest guy in the movie, but you like it.

• 1:22:47Speaker 02

  I think, I think this would be like-

• 1:22:48Bill Simmons?

  Missed the playoffs at plus 500. It's like, I'm zagging, I like this.

• 1:22:52Speaker 02

  App, this is, this is like the, the Titans winning the AFC this year.

• 1:22:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:57Speaker 02

  Is that Murdoch somehow is the smelliest one in the movie. Great question.

• 1:23:02Bill Simmons?

  The Rick Chiketti Guard Meat Award for most memorable death by a security guard or other bystander who the movie treats as inconsequential, but who probably had a spouse and kids who love him. Rambo gets in that helicopter. And at some point, it's just him and the pilot, and it cuts to a wide shot and he just pushes the pilot to his death.

• 1:23:20Speaker 02

  It's great.

• 1:23:20Bill Simmons?

  That poor guy probably didn't want to be there. I don't even know who he's, he seemed American, not Russian. Um, just doing like a, and all of a sudden falling to his death.

• 1:23:29Speaker 02

  Can you imagine? Rocky is, or Rambo is just beating the, the big Russian guy. Then he goes towards the front, takes out that fucking knife, and the guy's like, I'm just jumping.

• 1:23:38Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:23:39Speaker 02

  Fuck, I'm not, I'm not messing with this guy.

• 1:23:41Bill Simmons?

  It just cuts to, it's sounding like he jumps in the water. It's like just rocks and-

• 1:23:45Speaker 02

  No, he's to his death.

• 1:23:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:46Speaker 02

  And it's, it happens in T2 again. The T1000 gets in the helicopter, goes, get out, and the guy just jumps out of the helicopter.

• 1:23:53Bill Simmons?

  First Blood has it too, and, um, when he comes out of the cave after the rats and all that stuff, and he jumps in that Jeep, and just tells the guy, get out, and the guy just jumps, they're going 40 miles an hour. Um, picking nits?

• 1:24:08Bill Simmons?

  So we learn in the beginning, Rambo serving an eight year prison sentence for assaulting a police officer, murdering a deputy. I think they can frame that guy who falls out of the helicopter because Rambo threw the rock. That's at least like involuntary manslaughter. Attempted murder of a sheriff. He does shoot Will Teisel a few times through the roof. Destroys, how many millions of dollars of property? He destroys an entire town. $10 million?

• 1:24:39Speaker 02

  Probably $10 million.

• 1:24:40Bill Simmons?

  15 million bucks?

• 1:24:41Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:24:42Bill Simmons?

  And they're like, well, he did some good stuff in the war. Eight years. I feel like it's more than eight years. That feels like a 20 year sentence at least.

• 1:24:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can't kill law enforcement. And I know that he was under duress and all that, but yeah, probably. He got a very favorable judge.

• 1:24:58Bill Simmons?

  Great lawyer.

• 1:25:00Speaker 02

  Yes, great lawyer.

• 1:25:02Bill Simmons?

  What's going on in the beginning with the prisoners and Rambo just hammering rocks?

• 1:25:08Speaker 02

  I'm not sure. It looks metal. It looks really heavy metal. Looks cool.

• 1:25:12Bill Simmons?

  What's, what's the ultimate goal of this? Are they trying to split the rocks in half? Are they trying to get jewelry out of this? What are they doing?

• 1:25:21Speaker 02

  They're like, they're looking for rubies and stuff. No, I, I think they, I guess they make like gravel and stuff and try to knead smaller rocks from big rocks to get carried out of there. It's just basically supposed to look badass when he's swinging that hammer. That's all.

• 1:25:33Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:25:35Bill Simmons?

  Now, you, you're going to know this better than me because you're a big workout guy.

• 1:25:39Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:25:40Bill Simmons?

  Rambo's absolutely jacked, but doesn't eat anything for this entire movie.

• 1:25:45Speaker 02

  Great call, Bill.

• 1:25:46Bill Simmons?

  Do you lose muscle mass if you're not eating at all? Don't you need to eat like 5,000 calories a day to sustain that?

• 1:25:52Speaker 02

  Immediately. First of all, he needs at least 250 grams of protein every single day. He needs to be down on the ground doing diamond pushups and pullups every five seconds. Even Co at one point is like, you want some food? Rambo's like, no. Like, no, like you need like a Cliff Bar or something, dude. I love that you brought that up because like real workout nerds watch this movie and be like, that, that thing's going. Those kinds of abs will go in a few days if you don't hammer that. That's perfect.

• 1:26:18Bill Simmons?

  I feel like my instincts were right. Um, Rambo's there for how many days do we think?

• 1:26:24Speaker 02

  36 hours. Well, 36 hours till the extraction and then probably another day or two after that. So maybe three or four days.

• 1:26:32Bill Simmons?

  No facial hair stubble at all? We know Stallone can grow a beard.

• 1:26:36Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:26:36Bill Simmons?

  Nothing like a little goatee? Nothing?

• 1:26:39Speaker 02

  And you know what would have been badass? And I bet it got cut. How about he shaves with that knife like Mick Dundee does? That would have been a cool scene.

• 1:26:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I have one more, but did you have any nitpicks? Cause I have one more good one.

• 1:26:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. During the helicopter scene, which is pretty much Daenerys Targaryen and Drakkaras just setting fire to the entire city. Um, is he positive which of those shacks has the POWs in it? Cause they all look pretty much the same. He blows up 15 different edifices, but then leaves the one that has all the American POWs. And it makes me nervous every time as he's losing his mind and screaming at the camera.

• 1:27:14Bill Simmons?

  He's only seen this once from the ground and somehow like knows the air of view. He knows exactly what not to shoot the grenade at. I thought the same thing.

• 1:27:21Speaker 02

  There's no laser targeting. There's no radar. There's, he's just from the hip and like, he could have just blown them all up. It makes me nervous every time I watch it.

• 1:27:27Bill Simmons?

  Maybe that's why he started screaming. Um, all right. Here's my big one. I think this movie ends when he wa, when you say he walks away, what happens to Rambo?

• 1:27:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:37Bill Simmons?

  Right? What does the next two minutes look like for him? Next two hours, next two days? I'm going to tell you what happens. He immediately dies of a severe bacterial infection from being dangled in that sewage pit for 12 hours. There's no way your body, I can't even imagine what kind of a sickness you would get from that. Like think about that. Think of all the stuff that was in there combined with the leeches, but this is the kind of untreated feces and pee and every bad thing that is happening in this village. And they just have them hanging out in there. At one point, like the helicopter lands and it shoots the water in his face. I just think he has hepatitis A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. First seven letters of hepatitis. He has it by the end of this movie.

• 1:28:22Speaker 02

  I think each year, probably the worst 30 seconds of my calendar year is about the one time a year that I am at some sort of event that demands that I use a porta potty. And I go in there and you look down to that world war three hell on earth that's down there. He was standing in that for who knows how long with leeches all over his body.

• 1:28:42Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:28:42Speaker 02

  And it's pig shit.

• 1:28:43Bill Simmons?

  Sewage leeches.

• 1:28:44Speaker 02

  Disgusting. It's soldiers eating god knows what, shitting out god knows what. And he just doesn't even break his facial expression. The stench alone in that pit is absolutely abhorrent.

• 1:28:56Bill Simmons?

  Right. This is Andy Dufresne going through the sewage pipe.

• 1:28:59Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:28:59Bill Simmons?

  But it's an entire river of it.

• 1:29:01Speaker 02

  And Andy Dufresne is puking the entire time he's doing it. But Andy Dufresne is not the perfect killing machine.

• 1:29:06Bill Simmons?

  This does go back to my theory that Rambo had lost a sense of smell a long time before.

• 1:29:11Speaker 02

  I think it was an early strain of COVID. I, I think he's over there and he's just lost the sense of smell. You got it first.

• 1:29:19Bill Simmons?

  Sequel, prequel, Prestige TV, all black cast are untouchable. So they did two more sequels, neither of which we like. What would have been?

• 1:29:26Speaker 02

  It's rough.

• 1:29:27Bill Simmons?

  If you had had a third Rambo and we were in charge, what would the third Rambo movie be? If we're doing this correctly, what is it? Cause I, to me, I would have come back to America and moved more into the diehard sudden death, toy soldiers, under siege kind of area where he's now John Rambo's working as a cook on a, basically he could have been under, Sigal in under siege. I would have moved that way in Rambo three and not made it even more complicated and geopolitical. I would not have done that.

• 1:30:00Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, you run into it. We did it with Karate Kid two. Go back to where it all started.

• 1:30:04Bill Simmons?

  Go back to your roots.

• 1:30:04Speaker 02

  That's great. That's for two. For three, you come back home and can I talk you into a character shows up who is the relative or son of someone from Rambo one? Like maybe Brian Dennehy's son from the small town comes to find Rambo. I always enjoy that stuff. Yes. Young Teisel. Jackie Teisel shows up.

• 1:30:24Bill Simmons?

  You don't know if he likes Rambo right away. Maybe he's going to turn on him. We're not sure.

• 1:30:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:30:28Bill Simmons?

  Or the guy that he goes to see at the beginning of First Blood. Maybe it's that. He has some sort of apprentice.

• 1:30:34Speaker 02

  Who dies of cancer.

• 1:30:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:35Speaker 02

  We need those characters coming back. That's how that shit works. Like Die Hard three, the villain was Hans Gruber's brother. And that kind of worked for us.

• 1:30:45Bill Simmons?

  I do like the idea of him, of John Rambo just being the lead character in sudden death with Jean Claude Van Damme. Where it's just John Rambo's.

• 1:30:54Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:30:55Bill Simmons?

  He's just now working as a security guard in a Pittsburgh Penguins arena or something and then has to become John Rambo. Um, I, I would have gone that way.

• 1:31:03Speaker 02

  What if he just comes back and he's, he's like, he does the Rampod and it's just like, just him and his new pod alert. And it's just him telling stories and I'm like, how to kill people. Yes, exactly. Rampod. I'm into it.

• 1:31:15Bill Simmons?

  Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Fergie the Flora, Zane Lowe, Ted Levine, or someone else? What do you got for us?

• 1:31:22Speaker 02

  You know, one thing we haven't covered is when Johnny just draws up a play in the dirt when his helicopter is wounded and he simulates that it crashed and he goes to sleep and he does the rocket launcher. It's like a preposterously clutch moment. And the best part about it, Bill, is that if you look in the background in one of the rice patties, uh, there's an announcer's table and Gus Johnson is just sitting right there.

• 1:31:44Bill Simmons?

  I didn't see him. No.

• 1:31:45Speaker 02

  You gotta, you gotta look really closely, but I actually have the call and it goes like this. It goes, John Rambo, young fella. Ha, ha. Hunting commies in South Vietnam. Leeches still up his asshole. Pretends he's dead and shoots the bazooka through the windshield. Ah, pinko bastard blown out of the sky. Bring that man to Murdock. Ha, ha.

• 1:32:14Bill Simmons?

  He did it again.

• 1:32:15Speaker 02

  I love you, Gus.

• 1:32:18Bill Simmons?

  You think Collinsworth was next to him?

• 1:32:21Speaker 02

  Oh, I don't know, Bill. It's just an incredible.

• 1:32:23Bill Simmons?

  Gus, I, I can't believe what John Rambo did right there. I just can't. He just, how can you play dead after you killed 130 people?

• 1:32:32Speaker 02

  It's incredible.

• 1:32:33Bill Simmons?

  How did the Russian not figure that out? He's playing dead. Obviously he's not dead.

• 1:32:38Bill Simmons?

  Just want to ask her who gets it. Frank Stallone? For peace, peace in our earth?

• 1:32:42Speaker 02

  Somebody in the Stallone family has to get it. Yes.

• 1:32:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Uh, I guess it's special effects because that they get nominated. I have two unanswerable questions for you.

• 1:32:51Speaker 02

  Yes, I have one for you.

• 1:32:52Bill Simmons?

  What do Murdoch's next couple of years look like? Maybe it ends with him as the security guard in Silence of Lambs. Maybe that was the actual ending.

• 1:33:01Speaker 02

  You know what the sad part is? Nah, he falls upward, dude. He's going to get great positions and government jobs. Fuck that guy. You know, people like that. I know people like that. He will fall upward and continue to get more.

• 1:33:13Bill Simmons?

  Blue shirt, khaki police?

• 1:33:14Speaker 02

  Absolutely, dude. He is going to get paid more and be powerful and risk more American lives. No, he'll, he'll fall upward.

• 1:33:20Bill Simmons?

  Okay. When was the last time John Rambo got laid? If you're just going through the prism of this movie? Um, we know he, he gets out in, um, late seventies and kind of drifts around for a few years. Is there a girlfriend in there? Is there, is he dating somebody? Has he just sworn off? Is he just asexual? How does he get his rocks off?

• 1:33:45Speaker 02

  It's a great question. We had the, the stretch in the camp and the rock breaking camp after the, the rest issue. You have the timeline and basically boils down to is, is Johnny Rambo the kind of guy who pays for it? Is like, is, is he going to do that? I can't answer that question. I know soldiers over there. We're doing all kinds of things back in the day.

• 1:34:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:06Speaker 02

  But I'll tell you this, gets back on that horse real fast with Co. No hesitation, goes for it. So my answer would have to be, is a horny man? This is a man with needs? I think he found a way. I, I don't think it's been that long.

• 1:34:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I think probably didn't chase it. I think transactional relationships probably were working there for a couple of years.

• 1:34:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, listen, I would also ask that he get laid in prison, but I don't want everybody to get mad and that I would insinuate that about John Rambo.

• 1:34:34Speaker 02

  Pickle puffers.

• 1:34:35Bill Simmons?

  What do you have for unanswerable questions?

• 1:34:38Speaker 02

  All right, Bill Simmons, here we go.

• 1:34:41Speaker 02

  Are you a Sly guy or an Arnold guy?

• 1:34:44Bill Simmons?

  I'm a Sly guy. And by the way, I should have mentioned, uh, he is now in third place all time for the rewatchables at thirteen, tied with Robert De Niro.

• 1:34:53Speaker 02

  Cruise is first.

• 1:34:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:55Speaker 02

  And then who? Hanks, maybe?

• 1:34:57Bill Simmons?

  Pacino.

• 1:34:57Speaker 02

  Or Pacino?

• 1:34:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:59Speaker 02

  You're a Sly guy over Arnold.

• 1:35:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, so the, the complete list right now, now that we've done this, we've done four hundred and fifty-four movies. Cruise, eighteen. Pacino, fourteen. De Niro and Stallone, thirteen. Denzel, twelve. Arnold is only at eight, but we have some good Arnold movies left. I think, I think Sly, I think Arnold's peak was probably better.

• 1:35:25Bill Simmons?

  But I think Sly's body work is pretty, pretty crazy. We're going from seventy-six all the way to basically the Expendables with Sly. We haven't even done the Expendables yet.

• 1:35:36Speaker 02

  Like, put it this way, Sly, Sly's eighty, okay? At some point, we're gonna wake up and look at fucking Twitter and we're gonna see that tweet and it's gonna suck.

• 1:35:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:44Speaker 02

  And it's like, we're gonna see it for Arnold, too. And I'm trying to like, which one would, would knock the wind out of me harder? I personally am a little bit more of an Arnold guy, just a little bit.

• 1:35:55Bill Simmons?

  I get it.

• 1:35:55Speaker 02

  But these are, these are like, I feel like these men raised me. I feel like they're my Uncle Sly and my Uncle Arnold. And I don't know, I, I knew you were gonna say Sly.

• 1:36:02Bill Simmons?

  I, well, but I think they've reached where like Bird and Magic reached and some other people like when, uh, after a while, you stop thinking about the rivalry, the competition.

• 1:36:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:36:12Bill Simmons?

  And they're kind of linked together. I really do think these two guys are like linked together. They're making basically most of the good action movies for fifteen, twenty years here. So.

• 1:36:21Speaker 02

  How do you feel like now when you'll see Sly on some, showing up at some event or doing some project? Like, he's had a ton of work done, but like, who gives a fuck? He's still up there. He's kind of in shape. He looks good. He's still working. Like, I always feel kind of proud when I see him. And Arnold looks great, too.

• 1:36:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I, I think Sly, I don't like when he re-edits stuff that he did.

• 1:36:44Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:36:46Bill Simmons?

  Like when he redid the Rocky IV with his new cut with new scenes and took out stuff. I'm like, leave, leave shit alone, Sly. Your legacy's secure. He made a bunch of great shit. There's movies he did that we haven't even done on rewatchables yet that I've wanted to do, like Daylight, which I've tried to talk you into for a while. Uh, Lockup in Prison, which has the greatest non-sports movie sports scene ever in a movie.

• 1:37:09Speaker 02

  I, the question I get the most about this podcast, and I get a lot, is how do you pick the movies? And I always say there's a lot of different ways that come from Bill, but my favorite one is occasionally there'll be a daylight where you'll basically be like, dude, like, I need this.

• 1:37:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:25Speaker 02

  Get up to my level on daylight, so do this for me.

• 1:37:27Bill Simmons?

  Please do this for me. Please do this.

• 1:37:32Bill Simmons?

  Remember Billy, you'd most want from this movie? Let me get your answer first, and then I have some interesting facts on this.

• 1:37:40Speaker 02

  All right. Well, I would say I want the combo of I want the actual red headband and Co's necklace that he wears at the end, which barely fits around his neck. And I think that's a badass tandem. Like, those were probably sold somewhere, the real ones that exist. But what do you have?

• 1:37:54Bill Simmons?

  I really wanted the machine gun with the bullets so you could drape the bullets over your.

• 1:38:00Speaker 02

  Fucking awesome. God, I love that.

• 1:38:02Bill Simmons?

  And I was Googling it, and Stallone did an auction thing for a lot of his stuff in two thousand twenty-one, which I somehow missed. The Rambo two knife that you mentioned earlier went for fifty-one thousand dollars.

• 1:38:14Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 1:38:15Bill Simmons?

  The archery bow, you think it went for more or less?

• 1:38:20Speaker 02

  Less.

• 1:38:20Bill Simmons?

  Movie used archery bow, twenty-eight K.

• 1:38:23Speaker 02

  I knew it.

• 1:38:24Bill Simmons?

  And then the machine gun, sixteen K, which I think was the, was the buy if you're gonna do those.

• 1:38:29Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 1:38:29Bill Simmons?

  You sound like you would have gone all in on the knife, though.

• 1:38:32Speaker 02

  The knife is iconic, and they sold that knife to children, and it was a little pack with a grenade and like all Rocky's other gear. That was the symbol of the movie. Like, it's, and it's really cool when you watch. It's basically the second character in the movie after Sly.

• 1:38:45Bill Simmons?

  Coach Finstock, Mr. Miyagi were best worst life lesson.

• 1:38:51Bill Simmons?

  Uh, just kill Rambo, just take him out. Don't, like with all of these movies, just take the guy out. You've already killed all these other people and done horrible things. Don't let the guy linger. Don't let him dangle in a sewage pool. Don't, don't electrocute him when he's not gonna die. Just, just fucking kill him. Get it over with. Take him out.

• 1:39:10Speaker 02

  That's the Scott Evil, Doctor Evil thing. Why don't you just shoot Austin Powers?

• 1:39:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, just shoot him.

• 1:39:15Speaker 02

  I have a gun in my room.

• 1:39:17Bill Simmons?

  It's the Scott Evil life lesson. Just fucking kill him.

• 1:39:20Speaker 02

  It's always great advice. I, I wanna get this one in at the buzzer. Every office place can be cool if you make it. That hang that they have with Murdoch, I kind of wanna like go and have a fantasy draft there. Like, just the box score on that place, you know when it hits me? Is when Murdoch's like, give me something cold to drink, and they open the Coke machine, no coins, none of that, just reach in there. I would bet my life that that place has a stack of Playboys, a foosball machine, cigarettes around. Then Thailand, there's gonna be great takeout food. There's probably karaoke, like.

• 1:39:53Bill Simmons?

  Decent coffee.

• 1:39:53Speaker 02

  I kind of wanna hang there. That's what I'm saying. Like, there's beers later, you know, for sure. And by the end of that movie, I'm like, fuck the jungle. I wanna go hang with Murdoch and get one of those cold sodas. I'd love that place.

• 1:40:06Bill Simmons?

  So it's basically like a hangar that they put some boards up to surround to make it like seem like an office, but then they had all these nooks and crannies. Definitely a TV with some sort of weird antenna, where they could probably get football games or.

• 1:40:20Speaker 02

  It sounds pretty cool, right?

• 1:40:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you could hang out with Kreese, you could hang out with the indoor aviators guy. He's, he's just wearing the aviators at ten tonight. I'm with you. It was a cool office. Double feature choice, it's gotta be First Blood, right? Go First Blood, then you go Rambo two. Ben and I did it two weekends ago.

• 1:40:36Speaker 02

  How was that?

• 1:40:37Bill Simmons?

  Honestly, I keep saying honestly in this podcast.

• 1:40:41Speaker 02

  That's good. Shoot me straight.

• 1:40:43Bill Simmons?

  He loved First Blood.

• 1:40:45Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:40:47Bill Simmons?

  First Blood is still a fucking banger. It's so good. It's just a really, really good movie with like a message, uh, natural action. Will Teisel, I can kind of see it a little bit from his side, but he's also the villain. You know, I don't like him. There's some Korean War background with him where there's clearly like some Korean War, Vietnam War, Bad Blood. It's just a really well-drawn-out character. I like that he's, Caruso's in there and Chris Mulkey. And, uh, I don't know, I just, it's just really, really, it just holds up so well. And then it moves right into the second movie that's basically just, you know, a popcorn movie. But I, the combo of it was really nice.

• 1:41:27Speaker 02

  It's like, the first one, that image of, of Rambo with like the jacket on the side of the road. He's so emo and hurt and wounded. The contrast between that and super tan six-pack guy holding the bullet straps, it's like you're going from Led Zeppelin to like Cinderella. It's just a totally different genre. I love that, though. I would go double, double feature. Oh, fuck it, I'll pay it forward and I'll go Cobra.

• 1:41:50Bill Simmons?

  Oh, you'll do the fly too close to the sun combo? Or would you do Rocky IV?

• 1:41:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, he checks Stallone from the logo and Rocky IV, Cobra, I do all that stuff. I live for that stuff.

• 1:41:59Bill Simmons?

  And then Stallone wins the movie, I think it's fair to say.

• 1:42:02Speaker 02

  Definitely.

• 1:42:02Bill Simmons?

  Um, I don't know if Craig's coming in or not with his take, cause he is away, but if he, if he edits it in, uh, we'll throw in a Craig take, uh, maybe he did, maybe he didn't. Uh, Kyle Brandt, what do you got going on? Plug some stuff.

• 1:42:16Speaker 02

  Well, thank you. Um, Bill, I have a book. I have a fucking book and, uh, it is available for preorder now. I've never written a book before. I worked my ass off on it. It's, uh, kind of about my really crazy career and a lot of the lessons that I've learned. And it says to young people, hey, I've had a fucking weird career and it's okay if you do too. And I have a very generous contribution, uh, from Bill Simmons to that. And, uh, it's available now. It's called Do You, D O Y O U period by Kyle Brandt. And I'm gonna be book guy over the next several months. I've never been it before. What's your advice?

• 1:42:49Bill Simmons?

  Just gently remind people that it's coming, but don't do it too much and make them mad.

• 1:42:54Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:42:54Bill Simmons?

  That's the thing.

• 1:42:54Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:42:55Bill Simmons?

  Just, just keep reminding people that it's coming. But it's a preorder, it's a while away, right?

• 1:42:59Speaker 02

  It's not till January.

• 1:43:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:01Speaker 02

  And it's, it's also like, there's a lot of candy. I reference a hundred and fifty-two movies in this, in this book.

• 1:43:05Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:43:06Speaker 02

  I worked my ass off. And if you like the rewatchables, I think you'll like the book.

• 1:43:09Bill Simmons?

  Did you go into it all? Why you ducked the challenge? Was that a chapter?

• 1:43:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, dude. Bill, I go into the conversation you and I had about me ducking the challenge. If you wanna call it ducking, that is in the book.

• 1:43:20Bill Simmons?

  I felt like you ducked it because you would have won multiple titles.

• 1:43:25Speaker 02

  But I wouldn't be here right now. I'd probably be in a padded cell. I, I, I would be somewhere like, uh.

• 1:43:30Bill Simmons?

  Or, or you'd be on Paramount Plus right now with, with, with the guys.

• 1:43:35Speaker 02

  Happy to be on Paramount Plus. I don't think it would have been good for my mental health. The real world was a tough time. Listen, I, I, I recorded, I was the only person who did real, a real world during fucking nine eleven. All right? It was a tough four months.

• 1:43:46Bill Simmons?

  Holy shit.

• 1:43:47Speaker 02

  For a lot of different reasons. It's the only time in the history of the show that the, the castmates were allowed to watch TV. They brought in a TV for us on nine eleven. Bill and I are recording this on nine eleven.

• 1:43:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:43:57Speaker 02

  And we sat down and we just watched it. And honestly, like, I, I say this in the book, I'll tell you now, they did a really, really evil thing where they made it look like we were watching the towers fall down.

• 1:44:09Bill Simmons?

  Oh, they did a weird edit?

• 1:44:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. Whereas the shot of us watching the TV was actually like six hours later. So I see that clip around sometime and I think it's evil and fucked up and like, I, I, I hate it. But obviously I have a lot of, uh, baggage about the real world, but that stuff's in there, too.

• 1:44:25Bill Simmons?

  Well, we've known each other a long time. You've had a very interesting life. I'm excited to, uh, to dive into it, but congrats. It's really hard to write a book. I'm always, I've only done two and I don't wanna do a third one.

• 1:44:36Speaker 02

  I may be one and done, but we'll see.

• 1:44:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, we know we have Karate Kid three coming up later this year. Not sure when.

• 1:44:44Speaker 02

  Tell me when.

• 1:44:44Bill Simmons?

  I don't, I don't, I wanna, almost wanna build toward that, almost like the HBO.

• 1:44:48Speaker 02

  It's fun.

• 1:44:48Bill Simmons?

  The HBO sneak preview on July fourth, nineteen eighty-six for Rambo two. People won't know it's coming, but they'll know something big's gonna happen. But, uh, we'll see in a couple of weeks here in the rewatchables. Good luck with the football season as well.

• 1:44:59Speaker 02

  Thanks, brother. You too.

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