-Written by John Cajio.
First Blood (1982) is a film that does not suck. A strong story and strong performances told over an extremely tight 93-minute runtime ensure that the film is impactful without overstaying its welcome.
John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) wanders into a town looking for an old army buddy. He learns that his friend died from cancer the summer previous. He moves on. He enters the quiet, simple town of Hope, WA, where he is quickly stopped by the local sheriff, Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy). Sheriff Teasle offers him a ride to the other side of town. John asks if there is someplace to eat. Teasle suggests a diner thirty miles up the road and drops him off at the far end of town while suggesting that “his kind” isn’t welcome in Hope and that he should move on. John starts walking back into Hope and is immediately arrested by Teasle for vagrancy, resisting arrest, and carrying a concealed weapon (a bowie knife). Once at the precinct, John Rambo is placed in the charge of Deputy Sergeant Arthur “Art” Galt (Jack Starrett). Galt’s behavior towards John is callous, abusive, and psychotic, triggering traumatic memories in Rambo of his time in captivity in Vietnam. While some of the officers, primarily Deputy Mitch Rogers (David Caruso), protest Galt’s treatment of John Rambo, they do not take steps to actually stop Galt’s actions. Rambo eventually snaps and busts his way in a burst of action out of the precinct and into the surrounding forested mountains. For much of the rest of the film, John Rambo wages a successful one-man war against increasing numbers of local and state law enforcement personnel until he is eventually talked down by his former commanding officer Colonel Samuel R. “Sam” Trautman (Richard Crenna).
First Blood’s portrayal of law enforcement is shockingly prescient. Law enforcement in this film is portrayed as frequently cocky, bloodthirsty, untrained, and abusive. The thought of taking out John Rambo—who merely walked into town—gets them excited. Law enforcement in this film does a very good job of playing at war.
Meanwhile, John Rambo is at war and easily disables and disarms anyone he comes across in a display of competent proficiency—without killing them. Only one officer is killed indirectly by John Rambo’s actions, but the officer ignored his own orders by firing upon Rambo and has culpability in his own death, too. When Rambo tries to point this out, he is immediately fired upon by trigger happy law enforcement.
And so the cycle repeats until Crenna’s Col. Trautman manages to talk him down and allow him to be arrested, in a major deviation from the novel the film is based upon (Rambo and Teasle kill each other in the novel). It’s interesting to me that John Rambo is, more or less, on the right side of things throughout the film but now has to face serious legal consequences at the end for his choice to defend his righteousness. Meanwhile, the morally and ethically gray (at best) decisions of law enforcement won’t just go unpunished, but are now validated by their “successful” capture of Rambo. There is little doubt that if it wasn’t for Trautman’s intervention, Rambo would have won his war.
First Blood is a tight film with very strong performances from Stallone, Dennehy, and Crenna. Stallone’s performance is one mostly of actions and grunts that works well for the taciturn Rambo, but he gives one helluva monologue at the end of the film that puts his full range on display in a few brief, powerful moments.
Directed by Ted Kotcheff.
Written by Michael Kozell, William Sackheim, and Sylvester Stallone.
Starring Sylvester Stallone, Brian Dennehy, Richard Crenna, Jack Starrett, David Caruso, etc.
7.5/10 = WORTH RENTING OR BUYING
