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Just like fellow action star Arnold Schwarzenegger’s hugely successful Terminator franchise, Sylvester Stallone’s own Rambo series began with a more serious and somewhat darker debut film that has since been eclipsed by its own sequels and the iconic figure it spawned. The single word “Rambo” is enough to identify not only a series of action films in which one man takes on an army single-handedly, but also the type and style of action films in the 1980s it inspired. Schwarzenegger’s own Commando was a direct rip-off of the first two Rambo films. But the origin of both the character of Vietnam veteran John Rambo and the four films he would ultimately star in began with a novel written by John Morrell back in the early 1970s that was more of a political response to the Vietnam War and the soldiers who returned to find their country had abandoned them.

Bowing in theaters in October 1982, First Blood was one of those legendary “projects in development” that was optioned for film shortly after Morrell wrote the book in 1972. It would take ten years and several directors and stars to pass on the project before it fell into the hands of star/co-writer Sylvester Stallone and director Ted Kotcheff. Even after the project was finally greenlit and shooting began in Canada, there were still problems like the eleventh-hour withdrawal of actor Kirk Douglas, who was initially cast as John Rambo’s commanding officer, Colonel Samuel Trautman, a role that ended up going to Richard Crenna. But both Stallone and Kotcheff persisted in making the movie, even when naysayers suggested it might be “too soon” to do a movie about Vietnam vets.

In some ways it is the film’s unwavering focus on the lone renegade John Rambo character that makes it so effective. First Blood really has more in common with post-Vietnam era movies like Deliverance and Walking Tall than any of its own sequels, and it’s more a story of how the lone survivor of a tight-knit Green Beret unit tries to find a place to fit into “the real world” after spending so much time fighting in the jungle. The movie opens, appropriately, with John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) walking alone – the drifter without a home. He comes upon a small house where he hopes to find a familiar face from the past: a member of his unit from Vietnam, a man named Delmar Barry who, sadly, has since died from cancer which apparently was caused due to exposure to Agent Orange.

Visibly frustrated and disappointed, Rambo makes his way into the nearest town hoping to find a place to eat and rest. But the town he stumbles into is ironically called Hope and the local lawman, Sheriff Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy), wants no part of this vagrant. Shortly after encountering the drifter, Sheriff Teasle escorts him to the town limits and asks him to be on his merry way. Having had enough rejection, John Rambo defiantly strolls back into town and is arrested by Sheriff Teasle in short order. The other officers working for Teasle obviously suffer from big-fish-in-a-small-pond syndrome and aren’t aware of the term “police brutality” as they treat Rambo like a hardened criminal during his booking proceedings. When one of the deputies attempts to shave his prisoner, Rambo has a disturbing flashback to when he was tortured in Vietnam and goes wild, breaking free from the sheriff’s deputies and the local jail.

The local yokels, led by Sheriff Teasle, track Rambo up into the woods on the outskirts of town where Rambo is now in his element. He swiftly debilitates the Sheriff’s entire department using a combination of man-made traps and acquired weapons. Although only one deputy dies due to his own incompetence, Sheriff Teasle refuses to take Rambo’s plea to “let it go” to heart and calls in the State Police and National Guard to assist in tracking Rambo down and bringing him in. As word gets out about the incident, Rambo’s former commanding officer and trainer, Colonel Samuel Trautman (Richard Crenna) arrives to assist. Only he isn’t there to help them catch Rambo … he’s there to protect them from him. The cat-and-mouse game escalates to a stunning climax where Colonel Trautman’s warnings turn out to be very much true, although the stubborn Sheriff Teasle refuses to take his advice.

First Blood remains a unique and influential action-thriller that really was one of the first films to address how Vietnam veterans were callously treated after returning from their tour of duty. Like his other great alter-ego, Rocky Balboa, Stallone embodies John Rambo like no one else ever could. And it’s interesting to see in this first film how the character is pretty much a sad, lonely and dejected human being who finds it frustrating that he can’t return to “normal society” and repeated attempts to brush him off – or literally drive him out of town – only pour salt in the wound. While his violent outburst and attacks can’t and shouldn’t be condoned, you can understand how he feels and why he reacts the way he does. It’s a great, sympathetic portrait of a true antihero that Stallone does better than anyone.

The movie also benefits from a great supporting cast including Brian Dennehy, whose initial encounters with John Rambo are just spot-on; Richard Crenna, who brings a great sense of authority and yet apprehension to the role of Colonel Trautman; and some solid bit parts featuring David Caruso (CSI: Miami) and Chris Mulkey (Twin Peaks) as two of Sheriff Teasle’s bewildered and beaten deputies. Director Ted Kotcheff (North Dallas Forty) does a fine job of keeping the story moving and maintaining a great sense of location and geography, even when John Rambo is prowling around the vast wooded terrain. While the muscle-bound and machine-gun-toting icon we’ve come to know as simply “Rambo” really wouldn’t take hold until the first sequel, Rambo: First Blood, Part II, in this first film we get a sense for what drove him to such levels of anger and how he learned to eventually channel that rage against his enemies.

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