This review is of the TV-14 edited version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

It’s time to look at where it all started for Rambo. The guy’s definitely had to endure a whole lot over the years. It’s a bit more of a low key film than the sequels since it’s more about survival than nonstop fighting though. It can be a bit mean spirited though and some of the villains get off rather easy. Ultimately you can do a bit better for thriller films.

The film starts with Rambo approaching a small town. He finished a really tough tour in Vietnam and isn’t looking for any trouble as he passes through but unfortunately trouble finds him. Sheriff Will doesn’t take kindly to strangers and immediately gets aggressive. His corrupt deputies take sadistic pleasure in messing with Rambo as well to the point where they’re basically torturing him. Rambo tries to de-escalate things as much as possible but finally reaches his breaking point and tries to get out of there. He is still chased and in self defense fights back, which causes one of them to die. Will now vows to destroy Rambo no matter what and so Rambo will have to use his army training to take them down. The hunted has now become the hunter.

One thing I can say without the shadow of a doubt is that the premise is really good. A bunch of punks have basically picked a fight with someone who is far superior to them in every measurable ability. Rambo has actually been through a bunch of difficult situations and lived to tell about it. He’s had to hone his body and mind to their absolute peak in order to survive while these guys have likely never had to deal with a fraction of what he had to go through. Their attitudes aren’t justified in the slightest and they’re basically villains who have gotten ahold of some power. They’re lucky Rambo was as restrained as he was.

Throughout the movie he continues to take them down using non lethal means. I don’t think most characters would have been able to hold themselves back so much at that point. He does unfortunately take down the police dogs, rats, and other animals throughout the movie. There are enough scenes with animal violence that definitely take their toll on the film. Of course it’s self defense so you don’t blame Rambo himself but the film could have written its way around that too. The dogs are really paying for their corrupt owners.

In a way the film wants to keep from portraying Rambo as being too vindictive here but it’s part of what hurts the ending here. The whole cracking scene and speech at the end is intense but it feels like Rambo got the short end of the stick here. I do think that the sheriff and all of the main deputies needed to die by the end. At least show us some definitive punishment like they’re all locked up. It just seems like they got off easy even if many of them were seriously injured by the end, the death count wasn’t as big as you’d expect it to be.

It also takes away from the premise a little bit. In theory this is like a human predator movie with Rambo being so dangerous that he can take out a whole squad of men equipped with guns. You want to see him utterly dismantle the whole group but as a result there just isn’t a whole lot of time for that. I guess in a way we dodge some extra violence that way although the film is definitely still rather violent. Every quick cutaway to the Vietnam flashbacks is always intense after all and the injuries in the present are no picnic either.

You do feel the tension throughout the movie though as Rambo knows that making one mistake will mean his end. He has to play this absolutely perfect especially since he doesn’t want to murder anyone. He’s a good guy and the film certainly makes that clear. Will and the others are such over the top villains that you’re just rooting for them to lose. The best character in the film has to be Colonel Sam though. He works as Rambo’s hype man and the hype absolutely never stops. In every scene he is talking about how Rambo is on a completely different level and nobody can match him. It’s really quite impressive.

Again, this might be a case of the film not being able to live up to the hype there though as the way he hypes Rambo up, you’d expect him to take out a whole army. He still has a lot of difficulty here thanks to the self imposed restrictions and nearly gets murdered in the tunnel. I dunno, I guess I wanted more absolute domination after all of the speeches. It was always annoying whenever Rambo would lose ground. I did think Sam did not do a good job when he agreed to help Will and the others. He should have absolutely stuck to the “Get yourselves out of this problem” approach when they were being so unreasonable.

Ultimately Sam is good at his job and helps to de-escalate things but he could have just let Rambo go ham on everyone. By the end, the whole town was paying the price so you can see why he stepped in though. Either way this made for a good introduction and you can see how the studio would quickly want to make sequels soon. There’s a whole lot of ways you can progress from this initial plot although they never tackle the hunted theme again. Going forward you’re really going to see Rambo taking the offensive and destroying everything in his way.

Overall, First Blood was a reasonable way to start the series but is bogged down by the violence in general and also the animal violence. The lackluster ending/resolution for the villains also hurts. I get that they were law enforcement here but they were all super corrupt to the point of being gangsters so I don’t see any reason not to have them all bumped off. It’s a bit of a frustrating situation to be sure there. Well, at least it’s not like Rambo died or anything. Now that would have been an absolutely devastating ending.

Overall 4/10