First Blood (1982)

 

Off-List: First Blood

1982 was a year of movie legends, specifically movies that may have come out to modest success or appreciation but over the years have gathered a large following and, and in many cases, founded a franchise. “First Blood” is one such movie. It did well at the box office, but less so by the critics. To posterity, however, it is known as “Rambo I”, founder of the Rambo franchise.

I was not in it to begin with. Rambo is not really for nine-year olds, and my first experience was with the computer game and the later movies. In retrospect, though, “First Blood” is by far the best of the series and works perfectly well as a stand-alone feature.

John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) is travelling through the Pacific Northwest, searching for one of the few survivors from his unit in Vietnam, only to learn he died from cancer he contracted while in service. Leaving the homestead of his friend’s family, he approaches the town with the ill-fitting name of Hope. The sheriff of Hope, Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy), does not like drifters and see it as his duty to keep his town clean of them. He therefore gives Rambo a ride to the other side of town and lets him know in no uncertain terms that he is not welcome. The fact that he is a veteran carries no weight at all. Rambo figures he will go into town to eat anyway so Teasle arrests him for vagrancy.

The staff at the police station do their best to humiliate Rambo, especially Deputy Sergeant Galt (Jack Starrett). For a while Rambo stoically eats it, but eventually he snaps, knocks down the officers and escapes on a hijacked motorbike into the mountains.

What follows next is a manhunt getting larger and more intense with every setback it encounters. It does not matter how many men get hurt, Teasle will not yield, Rambo is going down. Rambo’s commanding officer in Vietnam, Colonel Trautman (Richard Crenna) shows up, telling Teasle he is wasting his men in a hopeless chase, but that just pisses off Teasle even more. Meanwhile, we are getting a 101 in jungle asymmetric warfare by Rambo, who pulls off one amazing stunt after the next on his pursuers.

“First Blood” can be seen for exactly that, one man’s fight against superior forces, one good man who is able to outsmart the bad guys even though they hold all the advantages. And it is good at that. It is intense, inventive and clever. Compared to the later installments of this franchise, everything is within the human possible and Rambo stands as an example of a single elite fighter against a bunch of redneck Sunday warriors. Well, a slightly contrived example admittedly, but the point is that Rambo is not a superhero, he is exactly what America created to fight the war in Vietnam and now the same country has declared war on him.

And that is the second way to look at the film and where this becomes interesting. This is really about the ingratitude of the country to the veterans. Teasle and his gang feel no appreciation for Rambo. To them, he is a hobo and later a menace. They have locked their door for returning veterans. Zooming out from the local community, John Rambo is a tool that has been discarded and the only difference from him and other discarded tools is that he is highly capable. So rather than being appreciated for what the country has made him become, he is chased or in the best case ignored, getting jobs like parking cars.

“First Blood” was one of the first, and really started a wave of, movies about returning veterans and while this wave was specifically aimed at Vietnam veterans, a string of wars since have made this subject relevant until today and not just in America.

Whether you see this as an action movie or a social conscience movie, it works amazingly well. Compared to the fare of the early eighties on both accounts, it stands out as having aged surprisingly well. Sylvester Stallone was already an established star at this time, but for my generation he is more associated with the Rambo character than the Rocky character. Rambo became a by-word for super soldier the world over.

My rewatch of “First Blood” confirmed everything I remembered about the movie and in a very strong year, I still think the List made a mistake leaving this one out. Recommended.