Rambo revised opinion: 'First Blood' is actually first rate

The first time I saw Sylvester Stallone's original Rambo film First Blood, I didn't particularly love it.

The second time I thought it was very good but I couldn't get past the absurdity of certain elements of the plot -- especially the opening scenes.

But apparently the third time's the charm. Last night I got to see the 1982 action film on the big screen at a special screening at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where the film's director -- the crotchety but charming Ted Kotcheff -- introduced it and did a Q&A afterwards.

His remarks certainly helped shed light on how thoughtful and smart this film is -- especially in comparison to the entertaining, but bloated sequels that followed.

Essentially, First Blood is very much an anti-war film, and not as right-wing as some might interpret it to be, with a very strong dramatic performance from Stallone at its center, which suggest depths he could go to as an actor that he sadly has not explored enough.

Of course, his Oscar-nominated performance in Creed has forced film snobs to at least think about taking him more seriously, but his early work -- in the first two Rocky films -- and here, suggest that he was really a dramatic actor trapped in an action star's body.

Stallone in First Blood

According to Kotcheff, it was Stallone who suggested giving the Rambo character minimal dialogue, which I had noticed on my first couple viewings, but it really struck me now.

This is a mysterious, haunted man of few words. So damaged and isolated from his service in Vietnam that he has no choice but to wander.

When he finally explodes in his famous (and unfairly maligned) final monologue it's shocking because he hasn't been able to adequately express himself previously.

The director made a very good and sad point about veterans returning from Vietnam -- they were shunned by both the left and the right. Sure, we know about soldiers being taunted and spit on by anti-war activists, but not enough is said about how right-wingers also distanced themselves from those soldiers because they were seen as "losers" who put the first official defeat on our war scoreboard.

Curiously, the villains of the first Rambo film aren't the weaselly bureaucrats who would populate the later editions -- they are law enforcement. Kotcheff casts the decidedly unsympathetic Brian Dennehy as a bullying sheriff who instantly decides to harass and antagonize Rambo simply because of the way he looks. I was particularly struck by how prominent the U.S. flags were on the uniforms of the officers while they mercilessly try to hunt down our hero.

Kotcheff said that the treatment Rambo receives and the town itself was meant to be representative of the country as a whole and the way Vietnam veterans were used and then abused. And at least in the original First Blood, that comes across.

The audience I saw it with snickered at times -- and sure, some of the film's elements are dated and melodramatic. But it is a serious film -- even a gritty one at times, where the action is taut and riveting. Stallone is leaner here than he would be in subsequent films and therefore more vulnerable.

It's worth a second (or in my case, third) look -- before Rambo literally became a cartoon character -- he was a powerful surrogate for a whole population on men who deserved better.