A staple watch of my formative years, alongside the ‘Rocky’ movies, First Blood was in regular rotation over at my parents house from the moment it hit the home video market. This was one of my Dads favourite movies, and as a kid I didnt really ‘get it’…Like, I didnt HATE it, I just didnt see what was here to LOVE exactly…Well a few years ago after some time away I chose to revisit it, and fell absolutely in love with this film, and recently I upgraded to 4k and decided to give it a spin to my partner who hadnt seen it before.
The plot follows one ‘John Rambo’ a drifter attempting to reconnect with his old army buddies. Rambo served in Vietnam and the film opens with him arriving at one of his old army buddies house, only to find out he died of cancer a year previously. upset, Rambo heads into the nearest town to try and get a bite to eat, only to come acropper to Sheriff Teasle. a small town backwater sheriff, who sees rambo as a vagrant threatening to disrupt this ‘small honest hardworking towns’ vibes. So he picks Rambo up, drives him to the city limit, tells him he’s not welcome and to keep walking if he knows whats good for him, before telling Rambo to get a shave and a shower, and then driving off.
Rambo then essentially does a 180 and immediately begins to walk back into town, causing Teasle to pull him over, arrest him and take him into the station, where the corrupt local team beat him, spray him with a fire hose, intimidate him, threaten to kill him and finally try to force him to shave, dry, with a straight edge razor. The incidents break Rambo, who has a severe PTSD Psychosis induced flashback to his time in Nam, and he promptly demolishes the police station, steals a motorcycle and flees to the surrounding woodland area with Teasle and his team hot on his trail.
But Rambo is no ordinary Nam vet. He’s something EXTRA. and after showing Teasle what he’s made of, his colonel from his time in active service, Colonel Trautman, is drafted in who promptly explains that Rambo was the best of a crack squad of green Berets who were sent to deal with exceptional top secret missions in Nam, that he’s been awarded the medal of honour. and that, the cops better back off while they can, or Rambo will bring a little slice of Nam to this small backwater town.
This, to me, is arguably the closest a film can get to being perfect, and almost certainly would be in my top 10 favourite movies of all time.
The scripts razor sharp, lean and to the point. Its 3 rock solid acts that move at a clip, transition seamlessly between each other. The pacings electric, your almost always on the edge of your seat, not entirely sure as to what’ll happen next. For 1982, the exploration of mens mental health, the fallout of the Vietnam war from a mental health perspective and the utterly abhorrent treatment of Veterans and survivors of that war is handled in a very stark, very realistic and in places genuinely harrowing way.
The characters all feel incredibly believable and naturalistic, all of them have a degree of depth and complexity, whether its Teasles toxic masculinity in thinking he can handle a situation he clearly has NO business being involved in, Rambos PTSD fuelled rampaging or the Colonels realisation that in making a machine, he may have permanently damaged a man. its a thoughtful and incredibly well handled set of character pieces here, that wonderfully interact with each other creating a contrast of types that I havent seen handled this well since ‘Jaws’.
The dialogues astounding, infinitely quotable, with maybe only one or two gentle wobbles along the way. with the only gripe I can really think being that I feel the ending itself is maybe just a little bit *too* abrupt, and probably could have stood to have had another 3-5 minutes or so to help better descilate things.
The direction is astounding, GORGEOUS location work is married to set work that, for the most part, feels so rich, while also so effortless. This is one of those films where its identity is so intrinsically tied to the directoral decisions, its hard to imagine a remake of this film having even an ounce of the power this does. with direction of the cast equally ABSOLUTELY blowing me out of the water with some tender deliveries, good prop and set space usage. AND for me? the decision to make this a christmas movie (ala Die Hard) is an amazing choice. which likely WILL prompt me to watch this again around December.
The cine is exquisit, rustic and craggy mountain scenes the look gorgeous, rich and mossy combine with the neon soaked beer smelling streets of a small Kentucky town to create a very impressive visual palette that, for me personally, gave me everything I wanted out of a rough and gritty action film. sequences are arranged near perfectly, scene structuring is pretty solid, barring literally one or two VERY small (to the point of nitpicky) shot issues, this is about as good as it gets for me.
and thats not to mention the performances, with Sylvester Stallone utterly blowing me away with his performance as John Rambo, he makes playing such a complex character seem so effortless, Brian Dennehy as Teasle is the perfect antagonist playing against Rambos emotive persona as the distillation of the gruff ‘show no weakness’ masculine traits that lead to the kind of mental health conditions Rambo is afflicted with. he managed to get some of the biggest grins off me throughout as the film clearly doesnt like the character and portrays him to be blunt to a fault on multiple occasions, especially when he goes up against Richard Crenna as Colonel Trautman. Who reminded me quite heavily of Christopher Lees performance in ‘The Wicker Man’ as a main character who’s fully aware of the situation, wants to try and help, but the bullishness and antagoistic bolts from the people he’s trying to help, ultimately leave him little choice, but to let these men ‘touch the stove’ to find out how hot it is.
Throw in an absolutely unparalelled score thats rich, swelling orchestral work that honestly could not match this film much better if it tried and is used near perfectly. And you end up with ‘First Blood’ an astounding watch for the time, and a somehow EVEN MORE relevent feature to the social climate of 2025 than it was in 1982.
And, as an aside (as I may never actually watch them again) I found it absolutely heartbreaking that, after this very nuanced and poigniant film. The studios decided from every ‘Rambo’ film onwards to essentially just retcon or play down his PTSD, in favour of turning this character into a meat shield with guns for arms. The sequels do little but cheapen the original, Im unlikely to ever watch them again, Rambo should live and die by ‘First Blood’.
TYTD Reviews 