First Blood (1982)

★★★

Directed by: Ted Kotcheff

Written by: Michael Kozoll, William Sackheim & Sylvester Stallone

First Blood tells the story of John Rambo, a troubled Vietnam war veteran who is passing through a small town in Oregan and just wants a bite to eat. The local sheriff isn't a big fan of drifters, such as Rambo, and arrests him after he refuses to leave town. After Rambo busts out of the police station, he runs off into the forest, with the determined, and a tad crazy sheriff and his gang hot on his tail. Back in his natural habitat, Rambo slowly incapacitates the unlucky officers one by one as they come after him, until the situation escalates so far out of control that there is soon a small army after him.

The scenes at the beginning of the film, where Rambo is in the police station, were for me, some of the strongest in the film. When Rambo takes his shirt off and we see the young officer's eyes widen and his face grimace, before Rambo turns around and we see his torture-scarred chest, is a brilliant moment.

As he is taken down into the cells, Rambo begins to have flashbacks to his rather unpleasant stay in a PoW camp during the war. When the officers have to hold him down, and one takes out a razor blade to shave him with, the flashbacks become a little too much for poor Rambo to handle and he consequently starts taking out the officers, left, right and center. The tension that has built up before this point through the scar revealing and Rambo's mysteriously quiet demeanour, makes it quite a dramatic moment when he finally pops.

Another great scene is when the sheriff is stumbling through the forest, listening as his men helplessly cry out as they one by one fall victim to Rambo's makeshift booby traps and ruthless guerilla techniques. 

Rambo's former commanding officer and only friend; Colonal Troutman, sums up the situation quite nicely: "I didn't come down here to rescue Rambo from you, I came here to rescue you from Rambo".

Rambo's closing speech, and possibly the only time in the film that he manages to string more than a few simple words and grunts together, is actually quite touching. You can't help but feel sorry for the big guy when he is sobbing like a child about his army buddy who got blown up in his arms... "I can't find your legs!"