First Blood (1982)

Directed by: Ted Kotcheff
Starring: Sylvester Stallone

***

First Blood does what most action movies do. It begins with a simple story, a simple conflict and a simple character and literally explodes into a action packed blood bath where one man fights and beats hundreds of others. But its Rambo so its okay. John Rambo, John MacClane and the Terminator are really the only characters allowed to get away with this nonsense.

Danny DeVito gives the best plot summary of Rambo in Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia so I'll just use that. John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone... if you didn't know that already) just got back from 'nam. He was hitchin' through Oregon when all of a sudden this cop starts harassing him. Next thing he knows, there's a whole army of cops chasing him through the woods. He had to take them all out... it was a blood bath. Now DeVito thinks this happened to him but its actually the very accurate plot of First Blood.  Whether or not the Army does train certain men into literal killing machines the way they did Rambo is irrelevant because in the context of First Blood, they did and Rambo is one of those killing machines. He's trained to ignore pain, to survive no matter what and when in doubt, kill.  So when he's presented with a situation in which all of those things come into play... that is exactly what happens. Fortunately, Stallone doesn't have to do much else.

When it comes to his monologue essentially describing his post war stress and how unfair he's treated after fighting a way he didn't believe in we really get a look at Stallone's acting chops, or lack there of.  The fact that the muscles in his face never seem to move really makes it kind of funny.

All that having been said, First Blood is a pretty good action movie because it knows its an action movie. Things blow up when they're supposed to. The good guys and bad guys are clearly distinguishable and its easy to root for Rambo.  Its an average movie but its action scenes are above average and because it doesn't stray from being what its supposed to be, I have to give it its due credit.