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We meet our man John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) as he comes up towards a small black community located nearby a lake in Oregon; a personal sign of hope for Rambo to finally start things fresh with a former war buddy that he came to hook up with. Sadly, he finds out through his friend’s mother that he died a summer ago due to cancer (or Agent Orange as she implies). Devastated, Rambo suddenly finds himself rudderless as he wanders along the state highway wondering what his future now will be. He comes up to a nearby town called Hope where he immediately is targeted by a zealous Sheriff named Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy), who sees in Rambo nothing more than a filthy beggar. Rambo, trying to be polite just asks Sheriff Teasle for a place to eat, but Teasle immediately lays down his terms and drives him off towards the edge of town and tells him to take a bath and a hike. Offended, and determined not to take any shit from anybody, Rambo walks back to town, and Teasle of course arrests him on the spot, and books him for vagrancy and carrying a concealed weapon (Rambo’s Army issue knife). Teasle’s deputies, turned into a bunch of thugs (especially Deputy Arthur Galt [Jack Starrett] who’s a friend of Will’s) begin to take shots at him during the booking process. It’s during this moment, that Rambo begins to suffer flashbacks from his captivity in Vietnam, where he was tortured in horrific ways. As Galt and his men continue to rough Rambo up, Rambo finally snaps and single-handedly kicks every Deputy ass in the building and escapes out of town and into the nearby Oregon woods. Sheriff Teasle immediately organizes a party to search for Rambo in the woods, but Rambo maims all of them with frightening precision, forcing Teasle to call the state police and the National Guard. It’s during this moment that Rambo’s former CO Colonel Samuel Trautman (Richard Crenna) appears trying to convince Teasle and the rest to let Rambo go because Rambo will kill anyone who stands in his way because he was trained for such purpose and to survive in conditions like the ones in the forest. Teasle ignores Trautman’s request, and deploys his men to find him, regardless of the consequences; consequences that he will bring to himself once Rambo goes after him big time

Though the psychological troubles of the Vietnam War soldier were explored albeit with some flaws in The Deer Hunter, First Blood offers another glimpse into these very inner workings. Though David Morrell’s book was basically distilled and altered for the screenplay, the modus operandi remains for the most part intact. Rambo is a mentally unstable veteran, misunderstood and isolated from society. He only knows what he was trained to do and is capable of doing it well, yet he’s completely unable to express his feelings or demons to anyone other than the very people that shared a similar experience. And when he gets into trouble, it would have potentially lethal consequences, for the soldier was trained in the rules of engagement, which if you’ve seen enough war movies you know what they are: no one fires unless fired upon. In this situation, Rambo gets pushed and bullied to the point that the deputies go over the line, and once that happens, he automatically feels entitled to respond against them. The movie title “first blood” comes from the action of dealing the first blow, which will of course result in a retaliating response. As that one man (Teasle) decides to wage war against him, Rambo retaliates going for the very source of that conflict. It’s a plausible scenario, and a very frightening one if it ever happened. It has to be said that Morrell’s book is more violent, because Rambo goes on a killing rampage left right and center, but despite the fact that the movie suffers only one casualty (two if you count a boar), the essence of this “soldier mentality” and its effectiveness remains the same.

The film’s original cut apparently was a different beast than the released version; Stallone hated how the film turned out that he demanded most of his screen time to be cut off. Fortunately, the requested changes worked effectively for the movie’s pace was sped up and the film’s focus on Rambo was on his survival and his military skills. This certainly is a huge plus, as the film keeps us going. Director Ted Kotcheff (whom I’ve never heard of before and since) also manages to paint some dark yet vivid portraits of the cold Oregon forests courtesy of Andrew Lazlo. The forest itself you could say becomes a character as well as the terrain and the trees and the green leaves as well as the dried out leaves simply come alive and it seems swallow everything that goes in there. The action sequences are spectacular of course, and credit has to go to Sylvester Stallone for executing that dangerous stunt at the Gorge where he plunged himself off the cliff and into those trees; came with a price though, as he broke 3 ribs, but the shot itself was breathtaking.

Speaking of Stallone, kudos to him as his minimalist turn as John Rambo (in part courtesy of the film’s editor) gives him probably his best performance since Rocky as anger, sadness, and sheer ferocity are channeled through his face effectively. But perhaps the best of the performances come from the supporting crew, with Brian Dennehy chewing the scenery with his embodiment of Will Teasle. Dennehy plays him as micromanaging zealot, who likes to be in control and who cannot tolerate anyone that goes past him who doesn’t bend over and kiss his ass. Dennehy is a longtime favorite character actor of mine and sadly a tad underappreciated, as he can unleash some fury and charisma either as a good guy or a bad guy. Richard Crenna expertly understates his part of Col. Trautman in order to give his character a sense of wisdom that any intelligent man could grasp, but no ignorant man could (which is the case of half the people in the movie that are chasing Rambo). Oh, and look for a green David Caruso in one of his first roles as Deputy Mitch, who’s probably the only character in the film that has a grasp of conscience and becomes aware of Rambo’s trauma.

In the end, this flick has become sort of an action “classic”, but most of that fame is probably more due to the film’s character due to the film itself, since John Rambo was used by Stallone and his cronies to turn the character into a full bred action hero for hardcore conservatives out there. This part saddens me the most, because usually you’ll have some people that watch a certain movie that will miss its point due to some circumstance or another. Here, of all the people that could’ve missed the point of the film and the character, it was the very people that were involved in making this film. This sort of development simply defies belief. So please, forget everything you’ve heard about John Rambo, forget the myths, the arrows, the macho bullshit, and the dumbass sequels. See this film for what it is and you’ll see that this is a very good film that has more to it than what you think. 4.5-5

link directly to this review at https://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=1259&reviewer=235
originally posted: 06/22/09 18:55:28
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