Friday, October 1, 2010

First Blood: A Quick Review

I finally saw the very first Rambo film. This is a big deal for me because I watched the fourth one first, kind of what I did with the "Die Hard" series, and the fourth Rambo is just terrible. It has fantastic action and such but it is a terrible movie whereas First Blood is a surprisingly good movie. Stallone plays John Rambo, a medal of honor winning green beret, who after finding that his last remaining army friend died from cancer, wanders through a small Northwestern town. He is harassed by a local sherrif who arrests him for vagrancy. Rambo has flashbacks to his days in Vietnam when he was tortured by the enemy while being mistreated in the police station. He has a panic attack, punches many police officers in the face and flees into the woods. The overzealous sherrif takes it into his hands to hunt down Rambo, but he really has no idea what he is in for because Sylvester Stallone will stab you multiple times with a knife if you mess with him. For the first time in my movie viewing life, I can actually say that Stallone's acting was actually fairly good in this movie, probably because he is silent for most of it. The movie itself is well paced and Rambo is a very sympathetic character. "First Blood" is also a good commentary on how conflicts can quickly escalate over misunderstandings if no one is willing to compromise, and shows how the horrors of war affect the men who lived through them. I highly recommend seeing this film at least once in your life.

-Christopher O'Connell

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