First Blood

3/18/2019

It was a bad time for everyone, Rambo. It's all in the past now. First Blood is directed by Ted Kotcheff and adapted by Michael Kozoll, William Sackheim and Sylvester Stallone, from the novel written by David Morrell. It stars Stallone, Brian Dennehy, Richard Crenna, Bill McKinney and Jack Starrett. Cinematography is by Andrew Laszlo and the music scored by Jerry Goldsmith. Locations for the shoot were in British Columbia. John Rambo (Stallone), ex Vietnam war veteran, wanders into small town Oregon and is met with hostility by Sheriff Will Teasle (Dennehy). Arrested for a trumped up charge of vagrancy, Rambo is subjected to rough house treatment by Teasle and his staff. Fuelled by the haunted images of his time in Vietnam, Rambo breaks out of custody and makes for the hills, with

5/2/2020

**_Action/adventure masterpiece about a one-man-army_** Vietnam vet John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) drifts into a Rocky Mountain town looking for a war buddy, only to learn that he died due to exposure to Agent Orange the prior summer. The town's sheriff (Brian Dennehy) tries to steer Rambo out of town and winds up arresting him. Big mistake because Rambo is an ex-Green beret, a virtual one-man-army, who takes on both the police and the National Guard using jungle warfare tactics. "First Blood" (1982) is an action/adventure of the first order. It's easy to lose sight of this in light of the two comic book sequels that made a caricature of John Rambo: "Rambo: First Blood Part II" (1985) and "Rambo III" (1988). Thankfully, the series made up for it with the outstanding "Rambo" in 2008,

6/28/2022

Sylvester Stallone Is "John Rambo", a Vietnam War veteran who is shocked to learn that the only other survivor from his crack team of Green Berets has died of a pretty pernicious cancer. He wanders aimlessly looking for a cheeseburger when he is escorted out of town by the sheriff "Will Teasle" (Brian Dennehy), who takes him for a vagrant. When he tries to come back into town, he is arrested and that sets off a chain of events that ends up pitting him against not just a rather brutal collection of local law enforcement, but ultimately the pretty useless national guard and his old CO "Trautman" (Richard Crenna). There is certainly a serious message here. This man has served his country at no small risk to himself, he even has a Congressional Medal of Honour, but has been pretty much abandon

1/12/2023

Am I the only one that thought that Rambo was supposed to be Native American? Or at least partially so? Anywho... this is NOTHING like the sequels. The basic plot was that a small town tries to bully a Vietnam Vet and gets a little more than they bargained for. it was more dramatic, it had more character, and had a better story than just about anything that followed. And it worked as a survivalist action movie as well.

7/1/2026

"First Blood" is the only "Rambo" film that warrants genuine attention. The Vietnam War was hardly a distant memory when this film was made. Its message of social isolation and alienation from mainstream society, combined with conflict trauma that makes moving on difficult to impossible, no doubt resonates with veterans of that unpopular war. This is a surprisingly sophisticated action film when viewed from this perspective. The fact it's able, with seeming ease, to marry up its thoughtful back story with gritty, intense and well-executed action is really a credit to the writers of the screenplay. Stallone hands in a suitably understated performance as a lost soldier, looking for a form of understanding and acceptance from a world that has moved on without him. A man pushed to his l