I def. read the novel, but decades ago.
He is wearing an army jacket when they find him, and after they take him to the station 12 minutes in his dog tags identify him as a solider, before all the shit goes down. (Later they do sort of dismiss his awards and medals once they confirm it, but of course by then things have spiraled out of control thanks to the most good l' boy of the bunch). Anyway, I know a lot of returning vets faced resistance from some segments of society, but authoritarian leaning small town police I would think would have supported them, especially since as depicted he doesn't seem scuzzy enough for them to pick a fight with him. I guess that is the specific aspect that's always confused me, since he initially never seems like much of a troublemaker (even if they claim he smells like an animal), just more like a hiker.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 1 September 2016 20:52 (seven years ago) link
Once they confirm he was a green beret/war hero he had already killed a cop.
Rambo seems a bit on edge to me when the main bad sheriff picks him up. I saw Rambo's remark at the end (which I don't think is in the novel, right? I've not read it but will if I see it) of soldiers coming back being dismissed as 'baby killers' filtering down to being seen as damaged goods by yer average pig.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 1 September 2016 21:11 (seven years ago) link
try to track down zero-budget DV remake cited above
― The Hon. J. Piedmont Mumblethunder (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 1 September 2016 21:18 (seven years ago) link
Maybe it is just a mundane filmmaking mistake. Stallone is pretty clean and well-kept when he's picked up, hair gelled, not nearly as horrible as he's made out to be. If he was filthy and unkempt he would be more disruptive, so I guess if the film is set in 1972, which it does not really resemble at all, then maybe it wouldn't take much to set off the small-town cops.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 1 September 2016 21:25 (seven years ago) link
Sly way too old for the character as conceived, he should be around 25
― The Hon. J. Piedmont Mumblethunder (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 1 September 2016 21:27 (seven years ago) link
was that a "thing" in the 70s? (Deer hunter, Grease)
― brimstead, Thursday, 1 September 2016 21:31 (seven years ago) link
The script tries to have it both ways: it wants to indict the practically non-existent portion of Americans who mocked Vietnam vets but makes them into cops.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 1 September 2016 21:34 (seven years ago) link
typical H'wood Reagan-era shit
― The Hon. J. Piedmont Mumblethunder (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 1 September 2016 21:35 (seven years ago) link
xpost So I'm not alone in noting its thematic inconsistency? (Not that I expect any.)
The second one is typical H'wood Reagan shit. The first is more a loose twist on the vigilante film, with the only honest man not vying with the cops but fighting against them. I don't think your hero stabbing, shooting, trapping, hurting cops is typical H'wood Reagan-era shit, though thematic inconsistency sure is.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 1 September 2016 22:05 (seven years ago) link
it wasn't a Golan Globus film, I know this because only one person died in it
― Neanderthal, Thursday, 1 September 2016 22:14 (seven years ago) link
it did have a lil of the "you leeberals didn't let us win" and went out of its way to pose Rambo as the protagonist of Five Man Electrical Band's "Signs" is where it's most Reagan-y
― Neanderthal, Thursday, 1 September 2016 22:15 (seven years ago) link
I dunno, I never got too much of a right wing vibe from his rant (which I haven't made it to, upon current rewatch). I got more of a you have no idea what it was like and it was all for nothing tragic vibe. As opposed to (the military fetishist James Cameron written) Part II which gets all do-we-get-to-win-this-time wish right wing fulfillment.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 1 September 2016 22:27 (seven years ago) link
it's not like, layered on thick or anything but he does literally say "they didn't let us win"
― Neanderthal, Thursday, 1 September 2016 22:29 (seven years ago) link
That's the point -- the politics are a muddle.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 1 September 2016 22:32 (seven years ago) link
it's too bad the movie didn't have him gutting Galt like the book
― Neanderthal, Thursday, 1 September 2016 22:35 (seven years ago) link
it's crazy how many actors were considered/interested/attached during First Blood's development period:
clint eastwoodrobert de niropaul newmansteve mcqueenal pacino (turned it down because his request to make rambo crazier was rejected)john travoltapowers boothenick noltemichael douglasryan o'nealkris kristoffersonjames garnerterence hill
― nomar, Thursday, 1 September 2016 22:44 (seven years ago) link
In a 2011 article for Blade Magazine, by Mike Carter, credit is given to (the novel's author David) 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.
― nomar, Thursday, 1 September 2016 22:45 (seven years ago) link
and Crocodile Dundee!
I got my first survivalist knife -- the hollow shaft with the fishing line and compass at the end -- thanks to it.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 1 September 2016 22:55 (seven years ago) link
what other survivalist knives are in your collection
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 1 September 2016 22:59 (seven years ago) link
I totally got a survivalist knife thanks to Rambo! Man, are Army Navy stores still open? The money they must have made after Rambo ...
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 1 September 2016 23:00 (seven years ago) link
― Οὖτις,
Swedish synth pop duos.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 1 September 2016 23:03 (seven years ago) link
http://www.nanarland.com/Chroniques/ramboleda/saut.gif
― meh 😐 (wins), Saturday, 3 September 2016 07:43 (seven years ago) link
http://www.therobotspajamas.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Rambo-Animated.gif
― meh 😐 (wins), Saturday, 3 September 2016 07:45 (seven years ago) link
Interesting retrospecive on the original trilogy (on the occasion of the new 4K blu-rays):
https://www.filmfreakcentral.net/ffc/2019/01/first-blood-rambo-first-blood-part-ii-rambo-iii-4k.html
― Timothée Charalambides (cryptosicko), Sunday, 20 January 2019 21:31 (five years ago) link
Really good write-up although this:
Yet I'd be lying if I said Rambo's isolation didn't resonate with me now, as I stew in the sads of middle age, unmarried and broke, with an inapplicable film degree (like Rambo's tank training) and a hollow husk of a social life. Adult men are so bad at maintaining friendships without the glue of a social institution keeping them together--just ask the MEL Magazine article "Why Are Adult Men So Bad At Maintaining Friendships?."
Felt a bit off. Its quite startling for a guy of almost no words or any kind of emotional life whose life has been devastated by conflict and loss to track and seek out his old buddy - and as he mentions later he did look up Trautman too.
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 21 January 2019 18:34 (five years ago) link
Disappointed by no mention of Rambo V: Last Blood (and yes, that's seriously happening).
― E Pluripubis Unum (Old Lunch), Monday, 21 January 2019 22:28 (five years ago) link
rambo 6: transfusion has a shot
― topical mlady (darraghmac), Monday, 21 January 2019 22:36 (five years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vWg5yJuWfs
I don't even see why this is a Rambo film. Looks like Sly vs ... Mexican drug cartel? So basically a full-on Death Wish right-wing fantasy in a way that the even the other sequels never quite were.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 30 May 2019 21:53 (five years ago) link
rambo cos the name will draw the boomers.
― easy ball shooter (Spottie), Thursday, 30 May 2019 22:01 (five years ago) link
right-wing fantasy in a way that the even the other sequels never quite were
Rambo III is the only one I've seen, which was the most demented right-wing fantasy movie I'd encountered before or in 31 years since, so yeesh @ this assessment
― quelle sprocket damage (sic), Thursday, 30 May 2019 22:12 (five years ago) link
Being a Rambo vs the cartels film makes almost too much sense for this franchise at this moment in time.
― omar little, Thursday, 30 May 2019 22:16 (five years ago) link
From memory, Rambo III was ... him fighting the Russians with Afghan allies? At the very least that conflict was complicated. But lone white badass going down to Mexico to fight the cartels? I dunno.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 30 May 2019 23:06 (five years ago) link
rambo helps proto-al qaeda good guys against evil soviets is complicated?
― findom haddie (jim in vancouver), Thursday, 30 May 2019 23:10 (five years ago) link
The first two sequels fetishize extra-legal (but hush-hush state sanctioned!) vigilante violence, but they're more about Rambo being called in/exploited to clean up US military messes. The third sequel, it's still a (humanitarian, iirc) mess to be cleaned up, iirc, but it lacks the government's go-ahead. This one seems full vigilante.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 30 May 2019 23:14 (five years ago) link
'afghan allies'
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 30 May 2019 23:15 (five years ago) link
the original First Blood is solid right wing pulp.
― recriminations from the nitpicking woke (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 30 May 2019 23:19 (five years ago) link
What makes the first one right wing?
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 30 May 2019 23:20 (five years ago) link
(Disclaimer: I only saw the third one one time on cable when I was a kid)
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 30 May 2019 23:21 (five years ago) link
Like, I understand that these movies are all violent kill festd and therefore fascist, which id to say conservative, but they are not all the same in my memory.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 30 May 2019 23:22 (five years ago) link
first blood pushes the "veterans were spat on when they came back" narrative which is inherently conservative and militaristic.
― findom haddie (jim in vancouver), Thursday, 30 May 2019 23:25 (five years ago) link
I want, what they want, and every other guy who came over here and spilled his guts and gave everything he had, wants! For our country to love us as much as we love it! That's what I want
― findom haddie (jim in vancouver), Thursday, 30 May 2019 23:26 (five years ago) link
(oh yeah that's the second one oops)
NOTHING IS OVER! Nothing! You just don't turn it off! It wasn't my war! You asked me, I didn't ask you! And I did what I had to do to win, but somebody wouldn't let us win! And I come back to the world, and I see all those maggots at the airport, protestin' me, spittin', callin' me "Baby Killer!", and all kinds of vile crap! Who are they to protest me, huh?! Who are they, unless they been me and been there, and know what the Hell they're yellin' about?!
― findom haddie (jim in vancouver), Thursday, 30 May 2019 23:29 (five years ago) link
forgot that he specifically mentioned the "stabbed in the back" narrative of the vietnam war
― findom haddie (jim in vancouver), Thursday, 30 May 2019 23:30 (five years ago) link
The first one's politics are bat shit. Yes, the Veterans were Spit On, but the police chief (Brian Dennehy!) treats Rambo like a hippie, so the director Ted Kotcheff has it both ways.
― recriminations from the nitpicking woke (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 30 May 2019 23:37 (five years ago) link
the boogeyman will usually change and so do the tactics this brave man has to resort to but the reactionary shit remains the same.
― omar little, Thursday, 30 May 2019 23:42 (five years ago) link
The first Rambo has really weird muddled both-ways politics, yeah, but the story of a vet with PTSD more or less let down/ignored by his country isn't really right wing, per se. The second one is definitely a warmonger fantasy, but Vietnam was of course prosecuted by both political parties (as have been countless military actions before and since then); the "finish the job" narrative seems to skew right, but iirc he was lured there to rescue POWs (and taken advantage of and fucked over by the US government in the process) . With the third one, by "complicated" I mean it's not as if the Russians were the good guys in Afghanistan; it was a big multi-national fuck-up of proxies and others. (I forget why they called in Rambo). In the fourth one it was ... a mercenary job? To rescue missionaries? I don't remember, but I don't remember it having anything to do with the US military. This new one, though, is fully straight-from-the-headlines conservative boilerplate. "Rambo travels to Mexico to save a friend's daughter who has been kidnapped by the Mexican cartel." So you've got Mexico, cartels, maybe sex trafficking, etc., and the lone wolf gun-toting white male hero fantasy crossing the border to do what (clearly) law enforcement cannot do. Because no doubt hands are tied, or whatever. Maybe when he gets her back he'll start building a wall.
Again, not saying any of these films are subversive progressive polemics or anything, but there is some (small) degree of nuance differentiating them, and I'm not sure I'd call the previous films reactionary, at least not in the way Death Wish or Dirty Harry are reactionary.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 31 May 2019 00:23 (five years ago) link
Some interesting stuff in here:
https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/rambo-movies-politics-sylvester-stallone-franchise
Re: Rambo IV:
Juxtaposing the jauntily optimistic ending of Rambo III (Rambo and Trautman drive off together, joking that they're going soft, as the film closes with a dedication to "the gallant people of Afghanistan") with the character's cynical speech to missionary Sarah Miller (found in the longer, more character-driven extended edition of the movie) about the universal character of war -- "Old men start it, young men fight it, no one wins, everybody in the middle dies, and nobody tells the truth." -- it's reasonable to infer that subsequent, uh, developments in Afghanistan and the light they shed on the wisdom of American intervention abroad led Rambo to simply end his tortured relationship with his country altogether. Who'd have expected John Freaking Rambo, of all characters, to reach this conclusion when the film was released, at the tail end of the George W. Bush administration, before Obama was elected, and when our still-ongoing war on terror was a mere 6-and-a-half years old?
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 31 May 2019 00:30 (five years ago) link
I just watched Rambo 3 for the first time a couple weeks ago and complicated is not a word I would place in the same universe as it.
― One Eye Open, Friday, 31 May 2019 00:47 (five years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eliQEStzhu4
― recriminations from the nitpicking woke (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 31 May 2019 00:49 (five years ago) link
Cobra is one of them movies I eagerly picked up in the video store in the 80's but barely remember anything about it other than chewing a cocktail stick or a match makes you nuff hard!
― calzino, Friday, 28 May 2021 01:11 (three years ago) link
he cuts a pizza with scissors too
― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Friday, 28 May 2021 01:14 (three years ago) link
lol I remember that bit now!
― calzino, Friday, 28 May 2021 01:15 (three years ago) link
tbf Jamie Oliver probably does the same
― calzino, Friday, 28 May 2021 01:17 (three years ago) link
F.I.S.T. might also be prime for a rewatch seeing as though I've watched The Irishman about 5 times now
― calzino, Friday, 28 May 2021 01:22 (three years ago) link
Cobra is an amazing exhibition of try-hard badass behavior which is a) uniformly weird and b) almost always performed for an audience of one so who are you even trying to impress rn, Cobretti
― Jerome Percival Jesus (Old Lunch), Friday, 28 May 2021 01:40 (three years ago) link
Also: Cobretti. Again: Cobretti.
― Jerome Percival Jesus (Old Lunch), Friday, 28 May 2021 01:41 (three years ago) link
Is this a film that could have had a different legacy if a different director and star had been picked.Trying to think how good First blood was as a book. I think it is a scenario that has been replayed elsewhere and not given birth to a bunch of progressively dumb gung ho sequels. Drifter turning out to be much more capable of looking after themself than first thought. Are there any Darwin awards handed out to people who've picked up on weapon use from this series.
― Stevolende, Friday, 28 May 2021 10:20 (three years ago) link
Yes, the Veterans were Spit On, but the police chief (Brian Dennehy!) treats Rambo like a hippie, so the director Ted Kotcheff has it both ways.
― recriminations from the nitpicking woke (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 30 May 2019 bookmarkflaglink
weren't a lot of vets also hippies? and hippies also vets?
Disappointed that no one itt mentioned the depressingly sad First Blood end credits song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTPO3Q5DJrE
― Paul Ponzi, Friday, 28 May 2021 10:56 (three years ago) link
Best thing about Cobra is that it's a Christmas movie.
― in a bar, under the (seandalai), Friday, 28 May 2021 12:17 (three years ago) link
And of course James Cameron wrote Part II, right?
Cobra, I don't think I've ever seen it, but boy do I remember the poster and tagline. I wonder what action movie was the first to use laser scopes?
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 28 May 2021 12:32 (three years ago) link
The 'get back to 'Nam and set s#1t right' genre started a few years before Rambo II.
Rambo II was made because Uncommon Valor and Missing in Action made a s#1t ton of money.
― earlnash, Friday, 28 May 2021 12:53 (three years ago) link
― in a bar, under the (seandalai), Friday, May 28, 2021 5:17 AM (thirty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
this is also one of my favorite things about first blood
― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Friday, 28 May 2021 12:57 (three years ago) link
The second best thing about Cobra is that the villains are axe-clanking quasi-satanist NWO-ers.The third best thing about Cobra is the trivia that this movie was somehow adapted from the same source material:https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f1/a3/a8/f1a3a80cef7a342ff92c1ee71aa2ac52.jpg
― Jerome Percival Jesus (Old Lunch), Friday, 28 May 2021 14:16 (three years ago) link
https://thedissolve.com/features/forgotbusters/749-cobra-gave-the-1980s-the-dirty-harry-knockoff-it-d/
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 28 May 2021 14:19 (three years ago) link
you have a life preserver? ... 'cause your french fries are drowning in there
― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Friday, 28 May 2021 19:00 (three years ago) link