Really Surprised!

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Blistering performances.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

I saw this movie for the first time when my mother was becoming psychotic, and asking me why I was watching "all this violence, and why the TV was watching us". I was in my 20s and had rented it on VHS... The minimalist dialog, the action, the fantastic one liners "A good supply of body bags...they drew first blood, not me...". The story of someone that just wants to be left alone, doesn't want to burden others with the problems that are compounding themselves resonates with all of us. This type of stripped down movie - Pulp Fiction was similar in that both movies could have been plays - is something I come back to every couple of years. I know this is a long bow to draw - but John's plea to his mentor at the end, and Julia Robert's scene at the end of Steel Magnolias are the few times i've teared up in a movie every time i see it.... Life not fair, it craps on people like Rambo...and my mother. If i could only take 10 movies to an island, there's a good chance this would be one of them (I'd have a USB with a few hundred crap movies too, but you know what I mean)....Thanks Mr Stallone - good job...

I hate dumb action movies and Sylvester Stallone often stars in them, but "Rambo First Blood" is an exception to the rule. This is truly a well made action movie with a great revenge theme in it. The story: a deranged vietnam vet flees jail. 90 minutes of pursuit follows. Will he live, will he die?I hesitantly put on this movie, expecting the worst dumb action movie, but I got pleasantly surprised. There is a lot of attention for detail: great glorious american soundtrack. I mean really only americans can make such a gloriously suspenseful soundtrack. Compliments to Jerry Goldsmith. Great photography too, I mean really great camerawork with pursuit scenes that actually uses stuntmen instead of computer generated action. Long takes without cuts. Real explosions too. Yes, for those too young too remember, there was a time when many explosions in movies were actually REAL. NO GREEN SCREEN and NO CGI. For a moment I even thought they used actual REAL machineguns too, because in one scene an entire builing gets blasted by a huge handheld machinegun and it looks damn real. The stuntmen get special praise in the end credits. They get top billing. That's unusual, but when you have seen the actionscenes you will understand why."Rambo First Blood" is a thrilling action movie with great acting in it. Acting is always paramount, even in an action movie. Bad acting spoils the credibility of the characters. Only explosions and chases alone cant make an action movie a classic. Fortunately "Rambo First Blood" is a joy to watch. There are 3 lead characters in it, of which 2 are full blown enemies of eachother. It sure makes for an enticing thrilling watch. It has become a modern classic, however critically gutted it was back in the eighties, it was still one of the biggest most popular action movies of the entire eighties! And it still stands tall today. Hard as a rock.

Wow.....what a hell of a movie! First Blood is an action movie that is unforgettable and intense! The story is great! Everything about this movie is perfect! I give this a 10/10. Would highly recommend it to others! Great movie!

This is one of those films that was hugely popular back in the eighties but for some reason simply fell by the wayside and has effectively been forgotten about. Okay, while it isn't the movie that catapulted Stallone into stardom (that was Rocky), it certainly helped. Mind you, it is also one of the movies that also Stallone as a stereotypical tough guy that speaks more with his fists than with his mouth. However, as a film it is quite good, and certainly much better than the three sequels that came after it. In fact the sequels seemed to toss the whole purpose of this film to simply turn Rambo into your typical action hero whose job is to go out and rescue people.Anyway, the movie is about a former special forces officer who served in Vietnam but upon returning to America has simply become a drifter. In fact everybody who he knew as a family have simply died leaving him effectively alone in the world. So, he simply drifts from place to place, however one of those places happens to be a small town called Hope, and the Sheriff decides that he doesn't particularly want people like Rambo wandering through his town so he forcefully has him removed, and when Rambo doesn't comply he arrests him, takes him to the station and roughs him up a bit.Well, that happens to be a bad move because not only does it trigger a number of flash backs, but it also causes him to snap, beat up all of the occupants of the police station, and then flee into the mountains. Well, being the cocky small town police that they are they decide to go after Rambo alone, but pretty quickly discovered that that is definitely not a good idea since he takes out each and every one of them. Then, when the cavalry is called in, he not only manages to escape their trap, but takes the fight into town where we come to the dramatic conclusion.First Blood isn't your typical action movie by a long shot. Okay, you do technically have the bad guys in the form of the police, but the thing is that these police aren't corrupt in the sense that some police officers are but rather they are simply protective of their town to the point that they will push strangers around and politely ask them to leave if it seems as if they are going to cause trouble. Well, the problem is that when you push the wrong person around it has the potential to come back and bite you.The thing with this film is that it is about how the Vietnam Vets were treated when they returned home from war. It wasn't the heroes welcome that the WWII vets received, but rather they were ignored, and in some sense blamed, for the failure in Vietnam. This was America and they don't lose wars, but Vietnam was an effective loss, so it must have been the troops who were the reason that they lost. The thing is that this was a different type of war, and one that they Americans didn't adapt to at the time (though past experiences have demonstrated that they can fight a guerrilla war). However, that is not the issue in the film, it is the treatment of the vets that is.In a way they were left on the trash heap of society, and when they were able to pick themselves up out of it they were once again blamed for where they landed up. In many cases it was the World War II vets that were looking down on them because they too had been to war, and they had managed to transition back into civilian life, so if the Vietnam Vets weren't able to then maybe they weren't trying hard enough. However, as mentioned, Vietnam was a different type of war and as such the experiences that the Vets had over there were different to those that the WWII vets faced.Some people simply label First Blood as a mindless action film, but I would say that it is much, much more than that. It doesn't end the way a mindless action film ends, but rather confronts us with the alienation that Vietnam Vets face in the United States. It also confronts us with the bigotry of small town America, though you are no doubt going to find that in many small communities the world over. It challenges us to how we should look at working with our vets, and attempting to seek solutions to these problems than simply sweeping them under the rug. The thing is that no doubt there are going to be similar issues in relation to the vets of the Iraq War, and things no doubt have the potential to be much worse for them due to the hypercapitalist nature of the modern world.