Film appreciation: Sylvester Stallone's Rambo debut, First Blood
Much like the series that made Sylvester Stallone's name, the films set the tone for a distinctly 1980s form of action movie, in which excessive violence was unleashed under a banner of Stars-and-Stripes jingoism.
Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Brian Dennehy
Ted Kotcheff
But while later episodes became implausible rocket-launcher-filled capers that walked the line between Reaganite foreign policy wet dreams and borderline homoerotic machismo, the first movie - like the first - was surprisingly serious and even poignant.
Based on the 1972 novel by David Morrell, tells the story of John Rambo (Stallone), a Vietnam veteran and drifter with post-traumatic stress disorder who falls foul of an overzealous sheriff (Brian Dennehy) while passing through a small US town, sparking a brutal manhunt, a violent backlash and a bleak denouement.
The film opens on an idyllic note, with Rambo walking up to a house by a sun-drenched lake. He becomes distraught, however, when he discovers the ex-army buddy he had come to visit had died of Agent Orange-induced cancer. He then finds himself at odds with the local lawman, Sheriff Teasle (Dennehy).
When the cops try to lock him up - beating and hosing him when he refuses to talk - Rambo experiences flashbacks of being tortured in a Vietnamese POW camp and fights back, fleeing to the surrounding woods with the cops in pursuit. From there on, the film centres on Rambo's fight to survive as he uses his guerilla warfare skills to outwit and outflank his heavily armed foes.