In general, I am not the world’s
biggest fan of the Rambo films.
Parts II – III (I haven’t seen
IV…) serve largely as awkward polemics in which a fighting man who is not
really a “thinker” is put in the position of making political statements, and quite
awkwardly so.
The grandiose, high-flying words just
don’t feel right or ring true coming out of John Rambo’s mouth. He’s not a politician. And he’s not a deep thinker, either.
I’m certain others will disagree
with me, but the blockbuster 1985 film Rambo: First Blood Part II feels
more like a laundry list of flag-waving philosophical talking points than a
fully-articulated movie.
However, I am an affirmed admirer
of First
Blood (1982) the film that introduced the world to Sylvester Stallone’s
character, a Vietnam veteran named John Rambo.
I resolutely admire this film not
only because of the splendidly orchestrated stunts and action scenes, but
because Rambo’s righteous anger is not directed at any one particular group or
party, but at everyone in a system
that has egregiously failed him.
In this way, First Blood is neither a
right wing diatribe nor a left wing polemic.
Instead, it is an aching,
emotional primal scream that transcends politics and partisanship.
The brilliantly-staged film asks
-- in a rage-driven bellow -- how the
world could turn out this badly for someone who was only doing what he felt was
his patriotic duty, and what he was called to do.
To put it crudely then, First
Blood is simultaneously anti-war and anti-anti-war.
The film vehemently derides the
system that landed men into armed conflict without the resources they needed to
cope with the violence they witnessed, and then abandoned them upon their
return stateside.
At the same time, First
Blood decries the protest movement, which in some cases blamed soldiers
for the decisions of their superiors, and the decisions of politicians in
Washington D.C.
There’s more than enough anger to
go around, in other words. And make no mistake: First Blood is an angry,
emotional, reactionary film.
Indeed, that incredible passion
is the engine that fuels this work of art and provides it tremendous energy.
By contrast, later Rambo
films attempt to suggest that might is right, and that if only Rambo were
“allowed” to fight unfettered, we would have won the war in Vietnam.
“Do we get to win
this time?” Those films asked, and that’s a
deflection. It’s the wrong question, and
the wrong point to focus on.
Whether or not one supported the
Vietnam War, this focus represents a deeply unsubtle simplification or reading
of history.
Or described another way,
First Blood is a veritable primal scream suggesting that the Vietnam
War was a nation’s folly, and that elements of the anti-war movement are
responsible for making it worse for those men who (bravely) fought in it than
it already was.
The later Rambo movies say,
basically, if we could just re-fight the war, we’d sure win it this time.
There’s a lot of space between
those two different philosophies. I find the first admirable, and the second
delusional.
First
Blood still
impresses as a work of art today as well because it recreates -- in small-town
America, no less -- the deep contradictions, divides, and paradoxes that
bedeviled the country in the 1960s and early 1970s.
First
Blood isn’t
a gung-ho, macho, flag-waving cartoon, either.
That’s merely the caricature that Rambo became later. To some extent, critics have retroactively
imposed that popular image on this initial film, and a re-watch reveals it just
doesn’t fit.
On the contrary, First
Blood is an angry, righteous -- and necessary -- exorcism of a national
tragedy; one in which there is plenty of blame to share on all sides of the
debate.
“We aren’t hunting him. He’s hunting us.”
Some years after the end of the Vietnam War, former United
States Army Special Forces soldier John Rambo (Stallone) goes to visit in his
friend, Delmar, in the Pacific Northwest, only to learn that he has died due to
his exposure to Agent Orange. Delmar’s death makes Rambo the last survivor of
his unit.
Rambo continues his journey through the town of Hope,
Washington, but is intercepted by the town sheriff, Teasle (Dennehy), who fears
that he is a drifter, and a dangerous element. Teasle drives Rambo out of town
and when Rambo tries to return to Hope, Teasle arrests him. Teasle finds a knife on him, and charges
Rambo both with vagrancy and carrying a concealed weapon.
While incarcerated, Rambo is treated brutally by Teasle and his
deputies, including Galt (Jack Starrett), Mitch (David Caruso) and Ward (Chris
Mulkey).
This wretched treatment causes Rambo to experience flashbacks
from his excruciating time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, and to lose control
of his impulses. His survival instinct kicks in, and Rambo injures several
police officers, escapes the jail, and flees into the nearby forest.
Teasle and his deputies pursue Rambo into the wilderness, and
before long, have a full-scale war on their hands as the Vietnam vet arranges
for them to be fouled by booby traps and other dangers.
Rambo incapacitates the entire group, and Galt is killed, though
the circumstances are not precisely Rambo’s fault. Rambo attempts to surrender to authorities,
but is rebuffed by Teasle, and nearly shot in the head. Later, Rambo captures Teasle and tells him to
“let it go,” but Teasle will not back down.
Before long, Rambo’s former superior office, Colonel Sam
Trautman (Richard Crenna) arrives in Hope to help negotiate a peaceful solution
to the war that rages.
But Teasle has already called in the National Guard and State
Police.
Matters are escalating, and before long, there’s a very real
chance that this war will have no winners at all…only casualties.
“We
had orders. When in doubt…kill.”
Adapted
from David Morrell’s 1972 novel of the same name, First Blood boasts a
truly clever structure in the sense that Rambo’s mis-adventure in Hope -- an
ironically-named town -- seems to mirror directly much of the Vietnam War
experience and context.
In
particular, Rambo runs up against a man, Teasle, who refuses to back down or to
negotiate with him. Teasle’s only strategic move is to escalate, to the point that his own town is torn apart by his
refusal to see reason, or to think outside the rubric of “total victory” over
Rambo.
In
some fashion then, Teasle -- at least as depicted in the film -- symbolizes
American leadership (from both political parties) circa 1964 – 1974 or
thereabouts. He represents unyielding,
boot-on-your-throat authoritarianism.
It’s his way or the highway. If he cannot win with the forces under his
command, Teasle will simply call up more forces and throw them at the cause too. His “tactic” is overwhelming numerical
advantage…and that’s it.
The
paranoid quality of First Blood’s narrative arrives early, specifically in Teasle’s
wantonly hostile actions in the film’s first act. He manufactures a reason to
hate and fear Rambo on sight, trumping up charges of carrying a concealed
weapon (a hunting knife, for Heaven’s sake…) and vagrancy.
In
keeping with the metaphor of the Vietnam War, Teasle’s trumped-up charges
against Rambo serve as the equivalent of The Gulf of Tonkin incident… a
manufactured reason to go to war. Suddenly, Teasle has the excuse he needs to
treat Rambo badly.
Oddly,
Teasle’s actions make almost no sense on a practical level. They are only
sensible if one considers the Vietnam War allegory. Rambo’s hair isn’t especially long or ratty. He doesn’t appear especially unkempt, either.
And all he wants in Hope is a hot meal.
That’s all he “hopes” to find there.
But
Teasle is unreasonably and irrevocably hostile to Rambo…even telling him that
his jacket with the American flag patch on it is bound to cause a problem. If we understand Teasle as an avatar for
imperialism and authoritarianism, he makes, at least, a modicum of sense as a dramatic
character. He becomes consumed by what
“could” happen because of Rambo’s presence, not who Rambo actually is.
And
frankly, this sounds a lot like the (now-discredited…) Domino Theory. If
Vietnam falls to communists, other states will also fall to communists too, the
theory went. There are a lot of “ifs” in
that scenario that don’t involve -- at least directly – either reality or the
present circumstances.
Similarly,
Teasle sees Rambo as a future threat not yet fully materialized, but it’s hard
to see exactly why. Does Teasle think that this Vietnam Vet is going to start
killing babies in Hope? Is that his
hidden (and paranoid…) fear?
Uniquely,
Rambo takes on the characteristics of the Viet Cong in a sense. He is “one” with the natural environment,
using the forest to his advantage and acting as a guerrilla soldier when the
first shots are fired.
He
also sets booby traps for the pursuing officials, and many of his decoys and
traps outlast superior firepower (the rubric of American forces in
Vietnam). At one point, Rambo even takes
sanctuary in a mine or tunnel system, imagery which clearly evokes Viet Cong
tactics.
In
more blunt terminology, both the Viet Cong and Rambo are deemed enemies of
American authority in their respective wars. They represent some “outside” or
“alien” world-view.
This
shuffling of traditional heroic and villainous roles in First Blood effectively recreates
the visceral confusion of the Vietnam War Era.
Americans were in Vietnam to fight the Viet Cong, and yet when stories
came back about the behavior of some American soldiers, the tide of public
opinion in the States turned against the war.
For
instance, the My-Lai Massacre -- the murder of several hundred unarmed
civilians by American soldiers in March of 1968 -- scrambled traditional concepts
of right and wrong, heroes and villains.
How could people feel patriotic knowing that innocent people -- families
-- were being murdered in their name?
First
Blood is
very much reflective of this complex and difficult dynamic. Watching the film,
we expect to be on the side of the law and order, on the side of police,
national guardsmen, and state police, but find that these expected authority
figures are alternately despotic and cruel, or (as in the case of the guardsmen)
inept, heavily armed buffoons.
By
contrast we sympathize with Rambo, even though he is launching a full-scale
assault against civil and military authorities. He destroys private property,
threatens other soldiers, and creates chaos.
Once
more, traditional lines of sympathy are scrambled, and it isn’t clear who we
should be rooting for.
Should
it be for the police to put down an armed threat who lays siege to an innocent
town?
Or
for the wronged man fighting the system with every ounce of strength in his
body?
Of
course, as the film’s central figure, we ultimately do root for Rambo, but he
is clearly an anti-hero in this film (as opposed to the sequels, where he is
the fully heroic arm of a resurgent right-wing establishment…).
In
First
Blood, Rambo is fighting the system -- the very system that we cherish
-- but one that has been co-opted by those who refuse to compromise or see
reason.
In
my introduction to this review, I noted that First Blood is an
“aching” primal scream, an exorcism, and a necessary one.
This
becomes especially apparent in the final scenes. I believe that Sylvester Stallone’s greatest silver
screen performance arrives in First Blood, in the last act, when
Rambo lays out the details of his life post-Vietnam.
He
can’t get a job, let alone keep one.
He
is tortured by images of friends and comrades dying in war.
He
is hurt -- psychically-wounded -- by the fact that his countrymen view him as a
murderer and a baby-killer when he went to war, essentially, at their
government’s behest (and demand).
Rambo
did what was asked of him, even though it was destructive to him personally,
and now he is hated for having answered the call.
Thus
Rambo faces the true no-win scenario. He
is derided because the war was lost, and hated by both the establishment and
the anti-establishment.
During
Rambo’s rage-driven monologue, Stallone is as raw and open emotionally as we
have ever seen him…as if driven mad by the contradictions of Rambo’s situation
as a man without a country, even though he gave everything for his country.
It
is rare for an action movie to resolve in a scene of intense dialogue like
Rambo’s in the police station in First Blood, but that’s precisely
what occurs here. We get this huge
catharsis -- not out of violence meted -- but out of emotional release. Rambo finally speaks at length about who he
is, and what he is become…and is heard.
To some extent, that seems to be all he wants…to be heard.
Later
films in the franchise, as I’ve noted, ask Rambo to pull a lot of partisan
baggage re-litigating the Vietnam War.
But in First Blood, we simply get a portrayal of an angry man who has
been abandoned at every turn, and must now reconsider what his country stands
for, and what he stands for.
First
Blood is all
about Rambo’s consuming rage, and the fact that he has been taught by his
country that the way to express such rage is through violence, war, and
blood-shed. Trautman describes the
philosophy as “when in doubt…kill.”
Only
in the film’s finale, when Rambo unloads his emotions on Trautman, however, is
Rambo’s war truly ended. Violence and
war ultimately resolve nothing, and that’s why First Blood is an
anti-war film. War did not make Rambo
great. On the contrary, war trained him
to survive in only one heightened environment -- the battlefield -- but left
him without the resources he needs to live among us, as a countryman, as a
human being.
Although
Rambo is described as “resilient” in First
Blood, the opposite is actually true. He mounts a “private war” because he “just
can’t turn off” the rage within him.
Accordingly, the final, haunting freeze frame of First Blood is a portrait
of a man who -- years after the war is ended -- is finally taking stock of who
he is, and why he is that way.
First
Blood
features involving, dynamic action scenes. Rambo’s escape from jail is a
kinetic dance, a battle of violence that showcases John as a living, breathing
weapon. The scene on the cliff-wall,
perhaps the most dazzling in the picture, is tense, and bereft of any obvious
fakery or stunt doubles. The action here
is splendidly orchestrated, but again, the film’s real gut-punch comes in the
substitution of Rambo’s self-expression for a deadly shoot-out. The film goes out not with a blaze of fire-works, but a blaze of emotions and truth-telling.
Popular reputation to the contrary, First
Blood isn’t a rah-rah cartoon or a two-dimensional action film like its
successors. It’s the emotionally-affecting primal scream of a soldier hated and
abandoned on all sides, who is just trying to mind his own business.
Sadly,
he finds that he is to be denied even that modest freedom, and fights back the
only way he knows how.
The
way we taught him to fight.