First Blood

''First Blood'' is a 1982 American war action film starring Sylvester Stallone as Vietnam War veteran John Rambo. Directed by Ted Kotcheff, the film was co-written by Michael Kozoll, William Sackheim, and Stallone, deriving from the 1972 novel ''First Blood'' by David Morrell. It is the first installment in the ''Rambo'' series, followed by '' Rambo: First Blood Part II''. The story follows Rambo who, after entering a small town and getting into a conflict with the local police, attempts to survive a manhunt using his expertise in survival and combat skills. It also co-stars Richard Crenna as Rambo's mentor Colonel Sam Trautman and Brian Dennehy as Sheriff Will Teasle.

''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 $160.3 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 the ''Rambo'' 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.

Plot

In December 1981, United States Army Vietnam War Veteran John Rambo discovers that he is the last surviving member of his outfit after learning an old war buddy died from complications related to Agent Orange exposure while they were deployed. Without direction, Rambo arrives in the town of Hope, Washington on foot, where he is accosted by local sheriff Will Teasle, who judges him harshly and presumes him to be a drifter. Teasle escorts Rambo out of town and tells him to move on. Feeling slighted, Rambo begins to return to town, where Teasle quickly arrests him and leaves him to be processed under the supervision of Teasle's cruel Chief Deputy, Art Galt. Galt and other deputies abuse Rambo, which trigger flashbacks to torture Rambo endured in Vietnam, leading him to fight his way out of town with his field knife into the surrounding mountains.

Teasle organizes a search party with his fellow deputies, air support and dogs; Galt ignores Teasle's orders and attempts to shoot Rambo from a low flying helicopter, but falls to his death when Rambo throws a rock that causes the pilot to lose control. Teasle soon learns that Rambo is a former Special Forces soldier and recipient of the Medal of Honor, but refuses to call off the search. Not wanting to cause more trouble, Rambo attempts to surrender, but is fired upon by the deputies, causing Rambo to flee into the tree line. Rambo uses bushcraft to create traps to subdue the pursuing officers, threatening Teasle at knifepoint to abandon his pursuit before fleeing further into the woods. Washington State Patrol Officers and Washington National Guard Forces are dispatched to assist with the search, alongside Rambo's mentor and former commanding officer, Colonel Samuel Trautman. Trautman advises Teasle to stand down, to which Teasle refuses. Over radio, Rambo refuses Trautman's pleas to surrender, condemning Teasle and his men and insisting that "they drew first blood."

Rambo falls back to an abandoned mine, where National Guard units fire an M72 LAW to collapse the mine after suppressive fire fails to force Rambo to surrender. Teasle and the others initially presume Rambo to be dead, but Rambo escapes the mine through a ventilation shaft, and returns to town after hijacking a military transport truck, intent on confronting Teasle. Trautman again fails to convince Teasle to let it go, while Rambo creates a distraction by blowing up a gas station, cuts power to most of the town, and destroys a gun store. After shooting up the sheriff's office, Rambo shoots Teasle in the leg, grievously injuring him with an M60 machine gun the former took from the military truck. Trautman arrives and appeals to Rambo, who finally relents and surrenders after breaking down about the experiences he suffered in the war and his treatment upon his return home. Trautman comforts Rambo, before escorting him into federal custody, the latter trading a passing glance with Teasle, who is taken to an ambulance for medical transport for his injuries.

Cast

Production

Development

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 day.

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. Douglas wrote in his autobiography that he initially rejected the script but agreed after Kotcheff changed it to retain the novel's original ending. When the ending was changed back to Stallone's version, he left the project. He wrote, "''I thought it would be better, dramatically, if my character realized what a Frankenstein monster, amoral killer, and menace to society he has created and kills Stallone. If they'd listened to me, there would have been no Rambos. They would have lost a billion dollars..''." 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.

Filming

The film was shot in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia on a $15 million budget beginning on November 15, 1981, and continuing until April 1982. The town scenes in the movie were shot in Hope and the nearby Coquihalla Canyon Provincial Park, called Chapman Gorge in the film, while the rest of the movie was shot in Capilano Canyon, Golden Ears Provincial Park and Pitt Lake in Pitt Meadows. During the production Buzz Feitshans replaced producer Ed Carlin, who suffered a heart attack.

The locations chosen for the film initially experienced unseasonably warm and sunny weather during the filming, which posed challenges since the crew had counted on an overcast setting. However, a period of heavy snowfall beginning in January 1982 delayed the production by two months. Other delays were caused by injuries to the cast during stunts, including Stallone sustaining a serious back injury and several broken ribs, in particular, due to performing his own stunt of dropping off a cliff and into a tree. Since the production ran over schedule, Crenna's role in the film was cut in order to avoid having to pay him higher fees as specified in his contract.

The firearms used in the film had to be imported into Canada because of the country's firearms regulation. In January 1982 over $50,000 worth of firearms—including fourteen M16 rifles, three Remington shotguns, two .44 Magnum revolvers, and eleven Colt AR-15 rifles—were stolen from the set. Although the guns had been modified to shoot blanks, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police claimed that they could be easily modified to fire live ammunition. After the incident the set was guarded by the Canadian Army, whose soldiers also served as extras in the film.

Post-production

The first rough cut of the film was between three and three-and-a-half hours long. According to Sylvester Stallone, it was so bad that it sickened his agent and him. Stallone wanted to buy the movie and destroy it thinking that it was a career killer. After heavy re-editing, the film was cut down to 93 minutes; this version was ultimately released in theaters. The ending used in the finished film was shot in March 1982, after the original one was deemed unsatisfactory.

Kassar and Vajna sought either Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox or Paramount Pictures as a distributor, displaying an 18-minute promotional reel to studios. Although they secured international distributors, they were unable to locate a domestic distributor to the film until they sent a longer 55-minute reel to the American Film Market. After Warner Bros. and Paramount expressed interest, Orion Pictures agreed to the domestic distribution of the film.

Music

The film's score was composed and conducted by Jerry Goldsmith, whose theme "It's a Long Road" added a new dimension to the character, and featured in the film's three sequels and animated spin-off. The soundtrack was originally released on LP by the Regency label, although it was edited out of sequence for a more satisfying listen. The album was reissued on CD with one extra track ("No Power") twice, first as one of Intrada Records's initial titles, then as an identical release by Varèse Sarabande. The complete score was released by Intrada in a 2-CD set, along with a remastered version of the original album (with the Carolco logo reviously released on La-La Land Records's ''Extreme Prejudice'' albumand the ''Rambo: First Blood Part II'' trailer music added), on November 23, 2010, as one of their MAF unlimited titles.

; CD 1 – ''Complete Original Soundtrack''
# "Theme from ''First Blood''" (pop orchestra version)
# "Home Coming"
# "My Town"
# "Under Arrest"
# "The Razor"
# "A Head Start"
# "Hanging On"
# "Over the Cliff"
# "A Stitch in Time"
# "Mountain Hunt"
# "No Truce"
# "First Blood"
# "The Tunnel"
# "Escape Route"
# "The Truck"
# "No Power/Night Attack"
# "Hide and Seek"
# "It's a Long Road" (instrumental)
# "It's a Long Road (Theme from ''First Blood'')" (vocal: Dan Hill)

; CD 2 – ''Original 1982 Soundtrack Album''
# "It's a Long Road (Theme from ''First Blood'')" (vocal: Dan Hill)
# "Escape Route"
# "First Blood"
# "The Tunnel"
# "Hanging On"
# "Home Coming"
# "Mountain Hunt"
# "My Town"
# "The Razor"
# "Over the Cliff"
# "It's a Long Road" (instrumental)
# "It's a Long Road" (recording session piano/vocal demo)
# "Carolco Logo"
# "Rambo" (Special Summer 1984 trailer)

Certifications

Release

Home media

Author Morrell recorded an audio commentary track for the ''First Blood'' Special Edition DVD released in 2002. Actor Stallone recorded an audio commentary track for the ''First Blood'' Ultimate Edition DVD released in 2004. This edition also includes a "never-before-seen" alternate ending in which Rambo commits suicide— a fate more in line with the original novel's ending— and a "humorous" ending tacked on afterwards. A brief snippet of the suicide ending appears in a flashback in the fourth movie. Lionsgate also released this version on Blu-ray. Both commentary tracks are on the Blu-ray release.

Momentum Pictures released an HD DVD version of ''First Blood'' in the United Kingdom in April 2007. Lionsgate also released ''First Blood'' as a double feature on February 13, 2007, along with 2004's ''The Punisher''.

The film was re-released as part of a 6-disc box set, which contains all four films in the series, on May 27, 2008. However, the box set is missing the David Morrell commentary, even though the packaging clearly states it is included. In anticipation of the release, the film was shown back in theaters for one night, May 15, 2008, through Fathom Events; the alternate ending was shown after the main feature.

''First Blood'' was released on 4K UHD Blu-ray on November 9, 2018.

Reception

Box office

''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 $64 million domestically, the highest-grossing film of the fall, and the 13th highest-grossing film of the year.

The film grossed $160.3 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 tickets in China, the highest for a foreign Hollywood film up until 2018.

Critical response

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. ''Slash Film'' writer Jack Hawkins took a different view on the ending, praising the scene for containing "the finest acting of Stallone's career," adding, "there are no one-liners, no showy acts of bravado, just messy emotion without any catharsis... Stallone couldn't have played the scene better and neither could anyone else."

''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 ambogets off with only a bad cut after jumping from a mountain into some jagged rocks".

Legacy

''First Blood'' received the most positive reception of the ''Rambo'' franchise. The next four sequels received mixed or average reviews.

In a 2011 article for '' Blade Magazine'', by Mike Carter, credit is given to Morrell and the ''Rambo'' franchise for revitalizing the cutlery industry in the 1980s due to the presence of the Jimmy Lile and Gil Hibben knives used in the films. In 2003, ''Blade Magazine'' gave Morrell an industry achievement award for having helped to make it possible.

A writer from the American think tank Foundation for Economic Education commented that the sequence of events in the film are the result of police brutality. He goes on to say that Teasle's initial approach with Rambo was without reason, and that he could have driven him to the diner or simply left him alone. He assigned blame to Teasle's actions and compared the situation to a number of twenty-first century police encounters that turned deadly.

Other media

Sequel

A sequel titled ''Rambo: First Blood Part II'', was released in 1985.

Video game

In 2014, '' Rambo: The Video Game'' was released, based on the first three ''Rambo'' films.

Statue

On August 14, 2020, a cedar wood statue of Rambo was unveiled in Hope, Canada, 38 years after the film's release. Mayor Peter Robb, local MP Mark Strahl, and the statue's sculptor, Ryan Villers, attended the ceremony.

In popular culture

* '' Son of Rambow'', a British comedy film inspired by ''First Blood''
* In the 2008 episode of ''It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia'', "Mac and Dennis: Manhunters," Mac and Dennis are inspired by "First Blood" and decide to stage a manhunt against their former high school rival Rickety Cricket. In the same episode, Frank also confuses his own life with that of "First Blood" and acts like he is having flashbacks to being in Vietnam.
* In 2017, "It's A Long Road" was used in the video game '' South Park: The Fractured but Whole''. It appears when the player is killed and receives a game over.
* The Mountain Goats released the song ''First Blood'' 19 August 2022 as part of the album '' Bleed Out'', a reference to the movie.

See also

* Survival film

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:First Blood
1982 action films
1982 independent films
1982 films
1980s adventure drama films
1980s American films
1980s chase films
1980s English-language films
1980s vigilante films
Albums with cover art by Drew Struzan
American action thriller films
American chase films
American films about revenge
American independent films
American vigilante films
Carolco Pictures films
Films about police brutality
Films about post-traumatic stress disorder
Films about United States Army Special Forces
Films about veterans
Films based on Canadian novels
Films based on thriller novels
Films directed by Ted Kotcheff
Films produced by Buzz Feitshans
Films scored by Jerry Goldsmith
Films set in forests
Films set in Washington (state)
Films shot in Vancouver
Films shot in Washington (state)
Films with screenplays by Sylvester Stallone
Orion Pictures films
Rambo (franchise)
English-language independent films
English-language action thriller films
English-language adventure drama films