Remember That Movie: First Blood
Hello and welcome to the first edition of Remember That Movie, wherein I write about an older movie. I am hoping Remember That Movie will be at least a monthly feature on my blog, but (as is the case with all new things) time will tell.
This month, 1982’s First Blood, starring Sylvester Stallone as the iconic John Rambo. First Blood is based on the novel by David Morrell and is about a Vietnam vet wandering through a small town in the Pacific Northwest. After discovering the last of his unit died of cancer, he gets picked up by a stubborn sheriff played by Brian Dennehy who doesn’t like wandering outsiders. Rambo gets arrested for vagrancy and quickly pushed around at the police station by Dennehy and his hapless subordinates (look for a very young David Caruso!). We’re not talking about the occasional tough-talk; Rambo is stripped naked, showered by hose and nearly shaven by force. Suffering such unnecessary trauma recalls his experiences being tortured in Vietnam, which makes Rambo snap. And that’s when the movie takes off.
Rambo runs off to the woods, pursued relentlessly by Dennehy and his hounds (both canine and deputy alike). And that’s when things go sour for the small-town cops and everybody learns what Rambo is really capable of.
Interestingly, Rambo the film franchise is known for its high body count and idiotic action. Not one bit of that reputation is present in First Blood. Rambo doesn’t kill a single person (intentionally) in First Blood. While there’s plenty of action and explosions, the film seems mostly concerned with making a statement about the Vietnam vet’s experience – so much so that just when the movie seems to derail from that focus, it brings it all back home with a great monologue at the end (a change from the source’s abrupt end to the character). Rambo starts the film as a pleasant guy minding his own business. Once he’s harassed, you can see in his face that it isn’t the first time. His stand-off in the woods is a logical act from a man fed up with being mistreated by the civilians of the country he supposedly fought so hard to protect. His onslaught of the small town (conveniently named Hope) near the film’s end, under the surface, is an attack on a society that hypocritically champions its values – values that Rambo supposedly signed up to represent and protect in the war.
All this is very intriguing, but First Blood isn’t without its silly moments. The movie can at times be a bit on the nose with its dialogue (“We ain’t hunting him, he’s hunting us!”). It does come close to the gratuitous explosions the franchise is known for when not only is the National Guard called in to aid in Rambo’s capture, but they bring a rocket launcher to take down this one man. Also, logic trips a bit when Rambo claims, “They drew first blood, not me,” referring to the civilian officers chasing him, when in fact Rambo is the one that kicked everyone’s asses first during his escape from jail! And that song during the credits by Dan Hill, who sounds like Michael McDonald from the Doobie Brothers, is just a weird, sappy way to end the movie.
That being said, First Blood is a surprisingly fun and interesting film about the attitudes Vietnam vets returned home to and one man who was pushed too far. Attitudes may be different about today’s veterans, making First Blood about a specific time, but that in no way sours the film. If anything trips this movie up, it’s itself.
6/10
First Blood is available on Blu-Ray and Special Edition DVD.