Netflix has added some amazing movies to it’s online streaming service and they added what might be one of the quintessential action films of the 1980’s ever. Sylvester Stallone (Rocky) may be one of my favorite action stars to come out of the 80’s and for the first time on Ass Whoopin Wednesdays, we are reviewing First Blood (or Rambo: First Blood). John Rambo (Stallone) is a Vietnam vet and one of the deadliest special forces man the country had in it’s arsenal. The only problem is that the Vietnam war has been over for some time and John is just a drifter looking for an old friend in Hope, Washington. The other problem is that John is hassled by the local sheriff of Hope in Sheriff Teasle (Brian Dennehy) and is mistreated by the rest of the cops. John manages to escape into the mountains of Hope and he begins a war with the Sheriff and his men. The film also stars Richard Crenna (Rambo: First Blood II) as Trautman, Bill McKinney (The Green Mile) as Kern, Jack Starrett (Blazing Saddles) as Galt, Michael Talbott (Carrie) as Balford, Chris Mulkey (The Purge) as Ward, John McLiam (Cool Hand Luke) as Orval, David Caruso (King Of New York) as Mitch, Alf Humphreys (X-Men 2) as Lester, Don MacKay (Stakeout) as Preston, and the film was directed by Ted Kotcheff (Weekend At Bernie’s). Before we get into the review of the film, let’s check out some of the stats.
Now there is a lot of explaining to do for this particular film and it’s stats as you can see from looking at the pic. As far as the knockouts/kills are concerned, he has 23 of them with three of them being dogs (well, it’s insinuated that he killed them). The origin story that is given to us thanks to some cops, but mostly Col. Trautman, only explains why he is such a dangerous man that these cops do not want to mess with. It is explained that he is a one man wrecking machine that was created by the US Government that can not be stopped plus you get some flashbacks to Vietnam in the beginning and a heart warming moment at the end with Rambo. There is no love interest and there is no one close to him that gets hurt in this film that we can speak of. The big boss is defeated at the end of the film and you’ll have to watch to find out how it’s done because it’s clever. This was really the first time that audiences were introduced to how bad ass Sylvester Stallone could really be when he took on the role of Rambo that would end up spawning three more sequels. The cinematography in this film is great and the action is pretty good as well or at least it keeps you on the edge of your seat for most of the film. It’s finally available on Netflix to stream so I suggest that you check it out. I am going to give the film 4.2 fists out of five for a final grade.
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