Rambo is the iconic expression of American uber-patriotism and bravado. He goes in alone, kicks ass, grunts a few well-timed quips, and slips away, leaving a blood-slick trail of body parts and explosions behind him. A pile of films have built up this image into self-parody and beyond. What has been destroyed in the process is the troubled, shell-shocked Vietnam veteran that was the Rambo of First Blood (imdb 1982), the movie that spawned the series.
Tonight, First Blood will be on the big screen once more. I'll be going with some friends to check it out. I've seen the film several times but always on TV, never in its OAR, and never uncut. I've always found this film to be very underrated. Thematically, it concerns veterans of an unwanted war who are, themselves, unwanted, and wounded in ways that go deeper than muscle and skin. This is the original John Rambo, a war victim, thrown away, unwanted, and hurt.
Of course, there is plenty of bad-assery on display. However, there is something unsettling, something disturbing about it: Rambo is like a weapon that, once triggered, is almost beyond the ability to stop - he is a prisoner of his own experiences, forced to obey triggers of violence embedded into his being like DNA. There is nothing glorious about it.
This subtext has been completed eradicated in the subsequent films but it is preserved, like a fly in amber, in First Blood. Not yet a super-soldier in fatigues, here Rambo is still human, fighting for America, not against some stereotypical foreign enemy but against America itself. Given the current political environment, the original Rambo is much more timely and significant than any of the Rambo figures that have come since, including last year's sequel. For one night, those larger-than-life images get swept aside to show the troubled figure beneath. I look forward to making his re-acquaintance.
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