First Blood (1982) - Rambo

Please Leave A Comment Below & Join Our Mailing List

First Blood: Rambo (1982)

8/10

Starring

Sylvester Stallone

Richard Crenna

Brian Dennehy

Directed by Ted Kotcheff

My favorite and till he makes another greater movie, First Blood is the best Stallone film there is. You have not seen a true action film till you see, Rambo. When a man decides to take on a whole town and almost succeeded in bringing down the whole town, all because some nosy Sheriff won’t just mind his own business… that is enough reason to see this movie ladies and gentleman

This movie is a Post-Vietnam War psychological thriller, which happens to be the only critical acclaim of the series, and the others in the franchise are all adventure action movies where Rambo is carrying out his destruction derby in other countries.

One reason why I like this movie is that, the hero is actually the bad guy. John Rambo almost killed everybody in the Sheriff’s office, he ran into the forest and the wild animals in the forest became the prey.

This movie has one of the best screenplays that there is, the movie makes great use of the trauma many of the Vietnam War Veteran go through and the segregation that they face when they get back home. Here in First Blood this man snaps and sees the entire town as his enemy, he feels like a captive and he acted like a mad man on the loose. Rambo is such a bad ass that I feel McClane (Die Hard franchise) took pointers from him.

The movie stars Sylvester Stallone as John Rambo, who was arrested for just looking different. While he was about to receive a shave in the station Rambo snaps as his memory of when he was a Vietnam hostage being tortured flashes in his mind. He breaks out of the station run into the woods and is being chased by the entire force.

There in the woods the Sheriff and his deputies shot at him and then drew first blood and Rambo retaliates, by almost killing everyone that came after him.

To me the best part in this movie is the last 7 minutes when Rambo does his speech about when he came back from Vietnam and his time there.

Based on a 1972 book of the same name by David Morrell, First Blood was directed by Ted Kotcheff and Stallone used his star power that he got from the Rocky films to change some aspect of the character. According to Morrell’s book Rambo was very violent and kind of like off his knockers as he killed many none stop and in the end died. The initial screenplay before Stallone worked on it had Rambo kill at least 16 people intentionally, but Stallone felt the character was too cold.

So he re-wrote part of the screenplay and made Rambo sympathetic, and also removing the whole Rambo killing intentionally and replacing it with Rambo killing some by mere accidents.

The movie was a huge commercial success making up to 10 times its production cost (budget was $14 million), and propelling Stallone who just had Rocky under his belt as his only hit movie then. First Blood is less gore and violent than the other movies in the franchise but boy it is the best one you will enjoy watching every time.