First Blood (1982)
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First Blood Movie Review
First Blood is a 1982 action film directed by Ted Kotcheff and starring Sylvester Stallone. It’s a movie that starts off strong, but really ends on a poor note.
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“If you don’t fly this thing right,
I swear to god I’m going to kill you“
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John Rambo, a former US soldier traumatized by memories of the Vietnam War, gets into trouble when an incident with a small-town sheriff triggers his violent side. This was my first time seeing this iconic action flick as I am not a big fan of the genre, but ultimately the movie proved to be surprisingly solid, at least for a while there.
The reason why these policemen are pursuing Rambo is ludicrous and difficult to believe, but at least the first half of the film was actually very entertaining and well executed from a cinematic standpoint. It looked and sounded great and the action there was pretty solid. The best moments are those survival scenes in the forest. I wished that we have seen more of those grounded scenes as those are the ones that made this movie worth seeing.
But eventually First Blood imploded with that truly horrible ending. This is where Rambo suddenly starts crying and talking about his PTSD stemming from the Vietnam War. We have already realized what he was suffering from, so this entire sequence was unnecessary from a storytelling perspective and it was just lazy filmmaking, not to mention how cheesy it was.
Sylvester Stallone is very good in the main role and quite believable as this almost mythical former soldier who is almost impossible to hunt down. How they talked about him was silly and it was also ridiculous that he could survive so many hard falls during this movie, at times making him seem like a superhero.
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But at least Stallone was terrific in his most signature role. Richard Crenna and Brian Dennehy are also solid, but their characters were far from great. Apparently, the famed author David Morrell wrote the original novel on which this movie is based on, which is odd as the story is so slight as is the dialogue. But when all is said and done, it ended up being much better than I thought it was going to be, though I still wished for a more competent second half.
First Blood actually started off quite strong. The first half is very entertaining and technically well executed with the survival scenes in the forest being the highlights. Stallone is also quite memorable in his most signature role. It’s a better than expected 80s action flick, but one that still imploded in that atrocious third act that saw too many ludicrous moments and some totally unnecessary, cheesy monologuing from the protagonist.
My Rating – 3
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