First Blood (Special Edition)
by Ted Kotcheff
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Brian Dennehy, Richard Crenna, Sylvester StalloneDirector: Ted Kotcheff
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD, Full Screen, Live, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled, Surround Sound, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 96 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-05-28
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Live / Artisan
Movie Reviews of First Blood (Special Edition)
Movie Review: "They Drew First Blood, Not Me"
Summary: 5 Stars
John Rambo was a man on the edge. He had fought courageously for his country, he even was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery and valor. He was also an exceedingly dangerous man, a killing machine, a man haunted by memories of Viet Nam. An Army Ranger, a member of a special unit that worked solitary, behind enemy lines in South Viet Nam, living off the land, killing, maiming and dispiriting the enemy. He was a prisoner, who was tortured mercilessly, until his escape, when he was finally sent home, not to cheers and parades but a chorus of dissenters spewing venom and saliva.
If that wasn't bad enough, he had been rousted and ran out of town by sheriffs and chiefs of police throughout the Northwest before he got to this the small mountain town of Hope, where there came an inevitable clash of wills with the local Chief of Police, Wilfred Teasle (Brian Dennehy).
John Rambo is just passing through and decides to get a hamburger and a coke but Chief Teasle has other ideas. He doesn't want any riffraff in his town so he picks up Rambo and drives him to the edge of town, He wasn't particularly nasty about it, in fact he tried to be pleasant, determined but pleasant, but he wasn't so pleasant later when he found the kid in the local diner. He told the waitress to put the kid's order in a bag and hustled him back out of town. By now Teasle was very annoyed, so he went and parked on a side street and kept watch to make sure the kid did not walk back into town.
For his part the kid (Rambo) had reached his limit. If someone was going to push him, he was going to push back. He was determined to go back and confront the Chief and make him back down but of course Teasle had other ideas. He arrested the kid, took him to jail, hosed him down and started to give him a haircut and a shave.
As mentioned, Rambo was an escaped POW. He was a prisoner of the North Vietnamese and was tortured relentlessly before escaping, so when the deputies tried to shave him with a straight razor, he flipped out and grabbed the razor and slashed a deputy that reached for his gun.
Thus began an odyssey of death and mayhem in the nearby mountains and eventually destroyed a good part of Hope.
Credits
Sylvester Stallone... John J. Rambo
Richard Crenna .... Col. Samuel Trautman
Brian Dennehy .... Hope Sheriff Will Teasle
Bill McKinney .... State Police Capt. Dave Kern
Runtime: 97 minutes
Director: Ted Kotcheff
Story by: David Morrell
Screenplay: Michael Kozoll & William Sackheim and Sylvester Stallone
Conclusion
To start with, I must tell you that First Blood is one of my favorite movies, so naturally I think everything was top drawer. The acting, the directing, the story, the editing, the cinematography, everything was excellent, especially Stallone who shinned with his less is more style of acting, reminiscent of Clint Eastwood and John Wayne.
The story came from a debut novel of the same name by David Morrell, who after such an auspicious start has penned many more novels. I read the novel as well and as violent as the film is the book is much more violent. The novel was set in the town of Madison, Kentucky, instead of Hope. By the way the town that the movie was shot in was indeed Hope, but it was in British Columbia, Canada not Washington or Oregon.
Overall, I find First Blood, to be an immensely entertaining movie and one full of morals. You may not be aware of these morals while you are watching the movie but they are more obvious upon examination. It would be good if we could take these morals with us from this movie and adopt them. Things like; you cannot judge a book by it's cover, things are not always as they seem, never prejudge your fellow man, live and let live, authority is not an excuse for misconduct and so forth.
First Blood was the first and in my opinion the best of the Rambo trilogy, with the second being very good as well. If you haven't seen either of these great movies, you're in for a treat. Assuming you like action movies that is. Final Rating 5 Stars.
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