'Rambo' - C or D?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0462499/

This is going to be worse than laughable, and I say that as someone who kind of enjoyed Rocky Balboa.

(does wide-eyed smiley thing)

haha off that IMDB board underneath onimo's link:

Is it true that Adrian is dead in this one?

(mirth)

first blood = g.o.a.t.

http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/9678/reddawnat2.gif

http://www.lifelibertyetc.com/images/products/Wolverines_Logo_m.jpg

http://500hats.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/200pxhot_shots_part_deux.jpg

G.O.A.T.!

red dawn also classic

Guy did a DV remake -- more faithful to the book, apparently -- of First Blood, in his apartment for $96. He did all the work behind and in front of the camera.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMrtTgJ8KnM

haha awesome

not quite, but watchable enough.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/film_review.asp?ID=4715

opens in NY today. should be double-billed w/ Buster Keaton in The Playhouse.

M Z Seitz video essay:

http://www.thelmagazine.com/newyork/how-to-remake-rambo-for-9551/Content?oid=1494242

First Blood classic, doesn't even overdo it with the stupid paranoid 80's conservatism...doesn't really do it at all unless you count John's speech at the end about "didn't let us win"

well, the success of Creed is already paying unfortunate dividends

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/sylvester-stallone-to-produce-probably-star-in-rambo-new-blood-tv-series-for-fox-20151201

Was rewatching the first Rambo, which I've always liked fine, but I could never figure out why the cops in this small town don't like him so much. What is their problem?

Great Goldsmith score, regardless.

Rambo has long hair, is shifty looking, has no car. Another factor is that small town mentality that is against anyone from outside.

The cops - being from a small town - also have no accountability, feel they can do anything to anyone and get away with it.

I bought all that from the off.

That part I got, but they also mock him for being in the military. Or maybe they don't actually believe at first that he is in the military? I couldn't tell from their demeanor whether his uniform was a pro or a con.

They don't believe that he was and they certainly haven't done a check.

He didn't have much of an uniform did he? No medals either.

read the novel

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.

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.

try to track down zero-budget DV remake cited above

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.

Sly way too old for the character as conceived, he should be around 25

was that a "thing" in the 70s? (Deer hunter, Grease)

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.

typical H'wood Reagan-era shit

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.

it wasn't a Golan Globus film, I know this because only one person died in it

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

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.

it's not like, layered on thick or anything but he does literally say "they didn't let us win"

That's the point -- the politics are a muddle.

it's too bad the movie didn't have him gutting Galt like the book

it's crazy how many actors were considered/interested/attached during First Blood's development period:

clint eastwood
robert de niro
paul newman
steve mcqueen
al pacino (turned it down because his request to make rambo crazier was rejected)
john travolta
powers boothe
nick nolte
michael douglas
ryan o'neal
kris kristofferson
james garner
terence hill

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.

and Crocodile Dundee!

I got my first survivalist knife -- the hollow shaft with the fishing line and compass at the end -- thanks to it.

what other survivalist knives are in your collection

I totally got a survivalist knife thanks to Rambo! Man, are Army Navy stores still open? The money they must have made after Rambo ...

what other survivalist knives are in your collection

― Οὖτις,

Swedish synth pop duos.

http://www.nanarland.com/Chroniques/ramboleda/saut.gif

http://www.therobotspajamas.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Rambo-Animated.gif

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

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.

Disappointed by no mention of Rambo V: Last Blood (and yes, that's seriously happening).

rambo 6: transfusion has a shot

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.

rambo cos the name will draw the boomers.

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

Being a Rambo vs the cartels film makes almost too much sense for this franchise at this moment in time.

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.

rambo helps proto-al qaeda good guys against evil soviets is complicated?

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.

'afghan allies'

the original First Blood is solid right wing pulp.

What makes the first one right wing?

(Disclaimer: I only saw the third one one time on cable when I was a kid)

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.

first blood pushes the "veterans were spat on when they came back" narrative which is inherently conservative and militaristic.

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

(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?!

forgot that he specifically mentioned the "stabbed in the back" narrative of the vietnam war

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.

the boogeyman will usually change and so do the tactics this brave man has to resort to but the reactionary shit remains the same.

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.

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?

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eliQEStzhu4

Interested to check out that thrillist piece tho. I saw Rambo IV in the theater but all I remember was a part where he shot a guy with a giant machine gun and the guy basically disintegrated, dont even remember what continent it took place on

xpost I didn't mean the movie was complicated, just the Afghanistan scenario.

I don't believe in guilty pleasures but I make an exception for the Rambo movies - bar First Blood, easily the best and least problematic entry in the series; contra his first post, Soto's follow-up implies (correctly) that it's not politically coherent/consistent enough to qualify as "right wing pulp." The rest are progressively uglier "do we get to win this time?" fantasies. I'm not proud of myself for liking them, even if "Rambo: First Blood Part II" is some kind of camp classic. But I do. God help me, I'm even looking forward to the new one.

can't believe they didnt call this one Tired Blood

looking fwd to Armond's rave

They should just call it "Blood."

"Blood Transfusion"

“Rocky Blood”

Wise Blood's already taken.

wow so last blood is absolutely fucking vile, huh

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 bookmarkflaglink

Batshit and hilarious. If I catch it on TV I always watch it.

First Blood is great. Haven't seen the others and haven't felt a compulsion to.

This, on the other hand: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rambo:_The_Force_of_Freedom

first blood is great

iii is incredible in its entirely unique mix of greased-muscle homoerotica and full-throated support for the brave fighters of the mujahideen

last blood is a sickening display of anti-mexican torture porn which ends with a gang of drug lords being murdered in rambo’s backyard viet cong-style network of boobytrapped underground tunnels

What I love about it is how a product of the US military completely completely goes off on civilians and police.

Similar to Mr.X's monologue in JFK. The same network trained to commit imperialist war crimes in country after country turning in on itself.

murdered AND mutilated i should have said in that last entry

Was rewatching the first Rambo, which I've always liked fine, but I could never figure out why the cops in this small town don't like him so much. What is their problem?

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, September 1, 2016 12:14 PM (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

acab

long hair

First Blood is a masterpiece

anti cop
anti military

watched the first three this week because i was sick and ii is directed by my dude george p cosmatos so i figured, why not? i fully fell in love first blood, it's a reverse horror movie that takes place largely in a forest wreathed in fog, and it's so mournful and sad. low body count weighs weird considering what comes after, iirc only a few dogs and a cop die, and the cop's death is an accident out of self-defense. small town sheriff's department on a power trip seems completely aligned with reality to me, even if the actual politics animating it are way more opaque

first blood part ii is such wild fascist wish fulfillment that i just imagine he hallucinates this entire film during his breakdown in the first film. it fuckin rules though. exploding arrows and a fuckin helicopter chase... cinema

iirc Rambo kills a helicopter with a rock

iirc only one person dies in the first Rambo!

the scene in ii where sly grabs the microphone and says "murdock... i'm coming to get you" has to be one of the greatest sequences in action movie history

george p. cosmatos also directed sly in cobra which, like first blood ii, is a total fascist fever dream and a movie i love dearly for how little it seems to take place in reality

^ OTM on every count.

Thank u for reminding that Cosmatos directed Part II, guess I need to see that real soon.

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!

he cuts a pizza with scissors too

lol I remember that bit now!

tbf Jamie Oliver probably does the same

F.I.S.T. might also be prime for a rewatch seeing as though I've watched The Irishman about 5 times now

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

Also: Cobretti. Again: Cobretti.

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.

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

Best thing about Cobra is that it's a Christmas movie.

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?

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.

Best thing about Cobra is that it's a Christmas movie.

― 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

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

https://thedissolve.com/features/forgotbusters/749-cobra-gave-the-1980s-the-dirty-harry-knockoff-it-d/

you have a life preserver? ... 'cause your french fries are drowning in there

I was just rewatching "First Blood," which of course holds up, largely because of Stallone, who is good in it. But today was the first time I ever knew/noticed/realized that "First Blood" came out the same year as "Rocky III." For some reason in my mind "Rocky III" firmly belonged in Sly's subsequent high-'80s era, which is to say, shitty/campy, so to see that it was more or less contemporaneous with "First Blood" was a shock. It's pretty, er, rocky going from there on out, though.

"First Blood" holds up because of the concept. In terms of performances Richard Crenna is hilarious.

Batshit and hilarious. If I catch it on TV I always watch it.

― xyzzzz__, Saturday, December 14, 2019

Me too!

iirc Rambo kills a helicopter with a rock

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 28 May 2021 bookmarkflaglink

#resistance

I re-read the Ebert review, and he specifically cites the acting of Crenna (as well as Sly and Dennehy), but Crenna is pretty silly. Very stiff, old-school acting against the modern intensity of the other two.

But yeah, Rambo doesn't exactly kill the helicopter with a rock, but he may as well have.

the police chief treats Rambo like a hippie

Like I said, I think Sly is really strong in this, but I think he was failed a hair by his fame, since the chief keeps implying he looks and smells like a homeless guy (as he is in the book, iirc), but Sly doesn't look particularly dirty or smelly. This movie absolutely works as it is, but might have been a bit stronger had Rambo indeed just been some smelly vagrant, which might have explained the chief's animosity. As it is I could never quite tell why the chief picks a fight with him.

ok First Blood and Rocky III being from the same year is really messing with my head

"Crenna is pretty silly. Very stiff, old-school acting against the modern intensity of the other two."

He is silly, not stiff - that's what I like about it.

Does help that he's given the best lines.

Crenna works b/c at that point in the film we need old-school reassurance.

I can see that. There's also nowhere else for the story to go by that point, so he comes in as a sort of solo Greek chorus/audience surrogate; we've seen what Rambo can do, so his job is essentially to tell the cops what we already know.

He is a bit like Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction. Do love that person who is going to sort a situation out, and do it efficiently xp

Yeah, an authority coming in to clean up the mess made by dumbasses.

I thought this revive would be about the "A Rambo in Curved Air" art I saw on bsky yesterday.

The scene b/w Crenna and Dehenny works because not only have you two acting styles in conversation with each other but at that point in the movie a Real Soldier dressed like one confronts a small town cop and we're meant to feel Dehenny's mixed reaction.

Dennehy obv

Dennehy plays his various conflicts/contradictions really well. He tries to maintain discipline with his cops, but he himself is driven by his petty, small town power trip. Alfred, I think that observation is a good one. Dennehy - and one presumes his fellow cops - have guns and cars and copters, but of course, they've (presumably) never seen war. Crenna (by word) and Rambo (by action) puts the lie to their tough-guy posturing, which of course parallels and reflects the similarly complicated feelings of the country itself in the years after Vietnam.

As it is I could never quite tell why the chief picks a fight with him.

Yeah that stuff confused me too the one time i saw this, back in the day.

The film's politics are intentionally a muddle.

fog of war

Talked about elsewhere on ilx I think, but could it be that Dennehy's cop is a Korean war veteran and resents the 'hippie' Rambo types rejecting the American forever war program?

That was my impression - I remember reading somewhere that Dennehy's character was a Korean War veteran who was angry with Rambo, because he had been regular infantry whereas Rambo was given a lot more leeway to be disrespectful and slovenly. The book is available online, and I learn that Book Tegan Teasle had a Distinguished Service Cross for his time in Korea. Of course the book is very different. Rambo comes across as a dick, and the body count is much higher. Also it has... words and things. Whereas the film was mostly pictures. Fucking Adric.

But, if you think about it, aren't words basically pictures? They're pictures of words. .>.O That's a word, but it's also a picture. A picture of a cat. Rocky III is hard to mentally date. It was Mr T's big breakout role, but I've always associated Mr T with the mid-to-late 1980s. The 1980s of Grace Jones and Miami Vice. Not the 1980s of Coal Miner's Daughter and the J Geils Band. It's like Fame. It feels wrong that Fame came out in 1980. It's a 1985 film. But it came out in 1980. Scuzzy, socialist, left-wing, Jimmy Carter 1980.

It's weird that there was a period when mainstream US cinema was full of inspirational films about ordinary people forming unions, beating "the man" and big corporations. Then there was Gung Ho, where the message was that you should work hand-in-hand with corporations, and Robocop, where the message was that corporations had won, and that was the world we had to live in. It's almost as if there were major social and political changes in the 1980s that I was unaware of.

I remember being really disappointed with Rambo: First Blood Part II. After the Hungerford Massacre it had a reputation as a brutally violent action classic, but it's surprisingly mild. I learn from the internet that First Blood had its UK TV premiere in 1986, but presumably Part II was much later on account of the controversy. I can't find a specific date. It's hard to separate that film from Hungerford. The basic theme of a relatively normal man who is pushed to breaking point by unfairness is powerfully appealing to some men. It's so unfair! But Michael Ryan's problems were tiny, and completely self-inflicted.

Rambo III is hilarious.

There's a reason why Norma Rae was a hit in 1979 and could only have been so in 1979.

How wild that the same director did this, "Wake in Fright" and "Weekend at Bernie's."