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SYLVESTER
STALONE AS JOHN RAMBO
First Blood is a 1982 American action film directed by Ted Kotcheff and co-written by Sylvester Stallone, who stars as Vietnam War veteran John Rambo. It also co-stars Richard Crenna as Rambo's mentor Sam Trautman and Brian Dennehy as Sheriff Will Teasle. It is the first installment in the Rambo franchise and is based on the 1972 novel First Blood by David Morrell, which many directors and studios had unsuccessfully attempted to adapt in the 1970s.
In the film, Rambo, a troubled and misunderstood Vietnam veteran, must rely on his combat and survival skills when a series of brutal events results in him having to survive a massive manhunt by police and government troops near the fictional small town of Hope, Washington.
First Blood was released in the United States on October 22, 1982. Initial reviews were mixed, but the film was a box office success, grossing $125.2 million and becoming the 13th highest-grossing film at the domestic box office and the seventh highest-grossing film worldwide. In 1985, it also became the first
Hollywood blockbuster to be released in
China, holding the record for the largest number of tickets sold for an American film until 2018. Since its release, it has been reappraised by critics with many highlighting the roles of Stallone, Dennehy and Crenna, and recognizing it as an influential film in the action genre.
The film's success spawned a franchise, consisting of four sequels (co-written by and starring Stallone), an animated television series, a comic books series, a novel series and several video games.
Nancy
(1st Lady) and President Ronald
Reagan with Brigitte Nielsen and Sylvester Stalone at
the White House 1985
PLOT
John Rambo, a Vietnam War veteran, goes to a lakehouse looking for his old comrade Delmar Barry only to learn that Barry died due to cancer a year ago, brought on by exposure to Agent Orange during the war. Rambo offers his condolences to Barry's widow for her loss and gives her a photo of the pair and the rest of their unit called Baker Team. Rambo continues his travels, where he reaches the town of Hope, Washington.
Will Teasle, the town's sheriff, drives him to the outskirts of town and explains that he considers it as his job to keep drifters out of Hope. Neglecting Teasle's warning, Rambo returns to Hope, which prompts Teasle to arrest Rambo on charges of vagrancy, resisting arrest and possession of a concealed knife. While being processed at the police station, Rambo continues to be defiant and Teasle's deputies, led by the sadistic chief deputy Art Galt, abuses him, triggering flashbacks of the torture which Rambo endured in Vietnam.
When they attempt to dry shave him with a straight razor, Rambo finally fights his way out of the sheriff's station, regains his knife and flees on a motorcycle into the woods. Teasle organizes a search party with rifles, dogs and a helicopter. Galt blatantly disregards Teasle’s orders and proper procedure and attempts to shoot Rambo dead from the helicopter with a sniper rifle. Cornered on a high cliff, Rambo leaps into a tree, injuring his right arm. With Galt still shooting at him, Rambo throws a rock at the helicopter, cracking its windshield and causing the pilot to briefly lose control. Losing his balance, Galt falls to his death on the jagged rocks in a gorge below. Rambo tries to surrender to Teasle, reasoning that Galt's death was an accident and that he wants no more trouble, but the deputies shoot at him and Rambo flees. Other deputies warn Teasle that Rambo is a Green Beret warrior and Medal of Honor recipient, but Teasle swears revenge and continues the search.
Using guerilla tactics, Rambo non-lethally subdues all the deputies. With the deputies incapacitated, Rambo corners Teasle, holds a knife to his throat and threatens "a war [Teasle] won't believe" if he does not give up the pursuit, before retreating further into the woods. The Washington State Patrol and Washington National Guard are dispatched to assist Teasle, along with Rambo's mentor and former commanding officer Col. Sam Trautman. Trautman advises that Rambo should be allowed to escape to Seattle to defuse the situation and be permitted to surrender peacefully, but Teasle, confident that Rambo is hopelessly outnumbered, refuses to go with Trautman’s plan. Teasle allows Trautman to contact Rambo to persuade him to surrender, but Rambo refuses, condemning Teasle and his deputies for their abuse and citing that they “drew first blood”.
At the entrance of an abandoned mine, a National Guard detachment corners Rambo. Ignoring Teasle's instructions to wait for his arrival, the guardsmen fire a rocket launcher, collapsing the mine entrance and seemingly killing Rambo. Teasle furiously berates the guardsman for disobeying his orders and demands that their leader Clinton Morgan dig out Rambo’s body. However, Rambo survives the attack, where he escapes the mine through a ventilation shaft, hijacks a military truck carrying an M60 machine gun and ammunition and returns to Hope to cause as much damage as possible in revenge.
In an effort to distract the authorities, Rambo blows up a gas station, cuts power to most of the town, destroys a sporting goods store and shoots the sheriff's station. Trautman, understanding that Teasle is outmatched, again tries to convince Teasle to leave
Rambo alone. Teasle, seeing Rambo's rampage as a personal attack, ignores Trautman's orders again and tries to hunt for Rambo on the station's roof, but Rambo manages to shoot and injure Teasle in a gunfire.
When Rambo prepares to kill Teasle, Trautman appears and warns Rambo that he will be killed unless he surrenders, reminding him that he is the last survivor of Baker Team. Rambo vents about the horrors of war and his traumatic experiences like watching his friends give their lives in Vietnam, being treated poorly when returning home, being unable to hold a job and being forgotten despite his sacrifices. Rambo breaks down crying as he recounts how a good friend was killed by a Viet Cong child soldier using a shoeshiner box wired with explosives. After being comforted by a visibly disturbed Trautman, Rambo surrenders and is taken into federal custody, while Teasle is taken to a waiting ambulance for transport to the hospital.
CAST
- Sylvester Stallone as John J. Rambo
- Richard Crenna as Colonel Samuel R. "Sam" Trautman
- Brian Dennehy as Sheriff William "Will" Teasle
- Bill McKinney as Captain Dave Kern
- Jack Starrett as Deputy Sergeant Arthur "Art" Galt
- Michael Talbott as Deputy Balford
- Chris Mulkey as Deputy Ward
- John McLiam as Orval Kellerman
- Alf Humphreys as Deputy Lester
- David Caruso as Deputy Mitch Rogers
- Don MacKay as Deputy Preston
- David Crowley as Deputy Shingleton
- Patrick Stack as Lieutenant Clinton Morgen
PRODUCTION
In 1972, Lawrence Turman at Columbia Pictures bought the film rights to First Blood for $175,000. Richard Brooks was slated to direct, and intended to have the film be an allegory on differing American perceptions of World War II and Vietnam War veterans, with Sheriff Teasle portrayed more sympathetically than in the novel. The film would have ended with Teasle ordering his men to drop their guns to try to reason with Rambo, who would have then been fatally shot by an unknown assailant. Brooks planned to start shooting First Blood in New Mexico in December 1972. The film did not proceed because the Vietnam War was still underway and Brooks left the project.
Afterward, John Calley purchased the rights at Warner Bros. Pictures for $125,000 with the thought of casting either Robert De Niro or Clint Eastwood as Rambo. A screenplay was written by Walter Newman with Martin Ritt intended to direct. The film would have criticized American military culture and portrayed Colonel Trautman as the film's villain, ending with both Rambo and Teasle dying. Sydney Pollack and Martin Bregman also considered directing the film, with Bregman hiring David Rabe to write a script. After Bregman departed Mike Nichols considered directing Rabe's script.
William Sackheim and Michael Kozoll wrote the screenplay that would be the basis of the final film in 1977, originally intending for John Badham to direct. Producer Carter DeHaven purchased Sackheim and Kozoll's script from Warner Bros. for $375,000. DeHaven secured the Cinema Group as a financer and hired John Frankenheimer as director with production to begin in Georgia. This was also the first version of the script in which Rambo survived the film. However, the project stalled again after the distributor Filmways was acquired by Orion Pictures.
After Mario Kassar and Andrew G. Vajna of Anabasis Investments read the book, they got interested in doing an adaptation as the first production of their studio Carolco Pictures funded by "in-house sources". They purchased the film rights from Warner Bros. for $375,000 and Sackheim and Kozoll's script for $125,000 in 1981. Ted Kotcheff, who had been involved in the project in 1976, returned after Kassar and Vajna offered to finance one of his projects. Kotcheff offered the role of John Rambo to Sylvester Stallone, and the actor accepted after reading the script through in a weekend.
Various scripts adapted from Morrell's book had been pitched to studios in the years since its publication, but only Stallone's involvement prompted its production. The time since the end of the Vietnam War and Stallone's star power after the success of the Rocky films enabled him to rewrite the script to make the character of John Rambo more sympathetic. Morrell's book has Rambo kill many of his pursuers, and Kozoll and Sackheim's draft had him killing sixteen people, but in the movie Rambo does not directly cause the death of any police or national guardsmen. Stallone also decided to let Rambo survive the film, unlike in the book. A suicide scene was filmed but Kotcheff and Stallone opted to have Rambo turn himself in at Trautman's urging. Stallone did an estimated seven revisions of the script. Kotcheff requested further work be done on the script, which was performed by Larry Gross and David Giler.
CASTING
Brooks originally wanted to cast Bette Davis as a psychiatrist and either
Burt Lancaster or Lee Marvin as Sheriff Teasle. When the project was purchased by Warner Bros.,
Robert De Niro and
Clint Eastwood were each considered for the role of Rambo. Ritt intended to cast
Robert Mitchum as Teasle and Paul Newman as Rambo. Pollack considered
Steve McQueen but then rejected him because they considered him too old to play a Vietnam veteran from 1975.
James Caan,
Burt Reynolds and
Robert Redford were also considered.
Rabe developed his screenplay with Al Pacino in mind for the role and had several conversations with the actor, who wanted to portray Rambo as a force of nature after seeing the film Jaws. However, Pacino decided not to be involved because he found the story too dark and also after his request that Rambo be a lunatic was dismissed by the producers. When Badham was considered as director he wanted to cast
John Travolta as Rambo, George C. Scott as Trautman, and either Gene Hackman or Charles Durning as Teasle. Frankenheimer considered Powers Boothe,
Michael
Douglas, and Nick Nolte as Rambo before casting Brad Davis because of his role in Midnight Express. Dustin Hoffman was offered the role of Rambo but turned it down.
For the role of Sheriff Teasle, Kassar and Vajna approached Academy Award winners Hackman and Robert Duvall but both turned the part down. Marvin, another Oscar winner, turned down the part of Colonel Trautman. James Mason and Richard Jaeckel were also considered.
Kirk Douglas was eventually hired, but just before shooting began, Douglas quit the role of Colonel Trautman over a script dispute; Douglas wanted to retain the novel's original ending of Rambo and Teasle fatally wounding each other, Trautman finishing Rambo with a kill shot, then sitting with the dying Teasle for the sheriff's final moments. Douglas also wanted Trautman to have more
screen time. Rock Hudson was approached as a replacement but was soon to undergo heart surgery and had to pass up the chance to work with Stallone. Richard Crenna was quickly hired as a replacement; the role of Trautman became the veteran character actor's most famous role, a performance for which he received much critical praise.
BOX OFFICE AND CRITICS
First Blood topped the U.S. box office for three weeks in a row, and its $6,642,005 opening weekend was the best October opening at the time. The film ended as a significant financial success, with a total gross of $51
million domestically, the highest-grossing film of the fall, and the 13th highest-grossing film of the year.
The film grossed $125.2 million worldwide, against a $15 million budget. It was notably the first major Hollywood blockbuster to be released in China, where it was released in 1985. It sold 76 million tickets in China, the highest for a foreign Hollywood film up until 2018.
The film received mixed to positive reviews from critics, and three lead actors received praise for their performances. In his review, Roger Ebert wrote that he did not like the film's ending, but added it was "a very good movie, well-paced, and well-acted not only by Stallone ... but also by Crenna and Brian Dennehy." He commented, "although almost all of First Blood is implausible, because it's Stallone on the screen, we'll buy it," and rated the film three out of four stars. The
New York Times film critic Janet Maslin described Rambo as a "fierce, agile, hollow-eyed hero" who is portrayed as a "tormented, misunderstood, amazingly resourceful victim of the Vietnam War, rather than as a sadist or a villain." Maslin also praised the film's story for its "energy and ingenuity". Conversely, Variety called the film "a mess" and criticized its ending for not providing a proper resolution for the main character. First Blood has been considered as belonging to the vetsploitation subgenre.
In 2000, BBC film critic Almar Haflidason noted that Stallone's training in survival skills and hand-to-hand combat gave the film "a raw and authentic edge that excited the audiences of the time."
Film.com and Filmsite regard First Blood as one of the best films of 1982, and in 2008 it was named the 253rd greatest film ever by Empire magazine on its 2008 list of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time.
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an 86% approval rating based on 49 reviews, with an average rating of 7.20/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "Much darker and more sensitive than the sequels it spawned, First Blood is a thrilling survival adventure that takes full advantage of Sylvester Stallone's acting skills." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 61 out of 100 based on 15 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
James Berardinelli of ReelViews called the film "a tense and effective piece of filmmaking". He noted that the film's darker tone, somber subtext, and non-exploitative violence allowed the viewer to enjoy the film not only as an action/thriller but as something with a degree of intelligence and substance. On Stallone's performance, he wrote "it seems impossible to imagine anyone other than Stallone in the part, and his capabilities as an actor should not be dismissed". In the 2010 edition of his Movie Guide Leonard Maltin gave the film one-and a half stars out of four, saying that it "throws all credibility to the winds about the time [Rambo] gets off with only a bad cut after jumping from a mountain into some jagged rocks".
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