The Good

It was great to see this movie again in much the same way that I originally screened it in the theater.

The Bad

The packaging. I had to put something, right?

John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) unwittingly created a 1980s icon with Rambo: First Blood. As a Vietnam Veteran the world hasn't been very kind to him. After finding out that a close friend has died due to exposure to Agent Orange during the war, Rambo, a vagabond, heads into a local town to get something to eat and plan his next move. It is here that he is confronted by Sheriff Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy). Teasle runs a quiet town and he doesn't want John Rambo messing it up. Eventually, after trying to slyly kick Rambo out Teasle ends up taking him to jail. After being abused, Rambo escapes and heads for the hills where, with the police chasing after him, he finally seems back in the war-like environment that made him.

After waging an insurgent styled campaign against the police force, it would seem that Rambo could escape whenever he felt like it. He doesn't and it is then than Col. Samuel Trautmen (Richard Crenna), Rambo's old boss, is called in to help tone down this out of control situation. In the end, Rambo blows up the town and eventually breaks down and, with Trautman's escort, is taken into custody.

Features

Audio Commentary Tracks

There are two tracks on here. One is with Sylvester Stallone and the other is with David Morrell who wrote the book on which this movie is based. Which one do you think I listened to? Stallone as usual is his engaging self as he talks about the second iconic character he created. What is so interesting is that Rambo becomes something truly different from Rambo: First Blood to Rambo: First Blood /a>. Stallone addresses this a little bit but he seems more content to just watch the film, discuss the actors, the background of the story, and not really try and compare and contrast things too much. All in all, if you are a fan of the movie or Stallone you will probably want to spend some time with this portion of the disc.

Deleted Scenes

Advanced Trivia Track

I really liked this. I think the reason I feel this way is because I have seen this movie (and the others) so many times that I actually knew a lot of this stuff anyway. Still, it was nice rediscovering tidbits about where the movie was shot, who was originally going to do this or that in the film, and what the original ending of the book and the movie was. While I think this might be more for the geeks like me who think the world of Stallone (and his films), I would suggest checking this out just because it's interesting and you might learn something.

Drawing Rambo: First Blood

A cool "making of," this is just long enough not to play like an electronic press kit for this film. We find out about the origins of the character, how Stallone got involved with this project, and what the shooting conditions were like. It is also interesting how at one of the first screenings of this film the audience hated it. Some tweaks were made and that is how it ended up pulling in almost $50 million in US box office. They have some older footage from the original promotion of this movie, and all of it works to good effect as the main people involved look back. I don't know if this was the best "making of" I have ever seen, but I was rapt with attention the entire way through.

Video

MPEG-4 - 1080p Transfer - Having seen this film so many times (in the theater and numerous times on VHS and DVD), I was surprised at how much bumping this film up on Blu-ray brightened up the images. There are things going on in the underground mine scene that I had never seen before. This movie also has a dark look simply because that's how it was shot. I have read online that some people found the images grainy, but that might have something to do with the settings on their TVs. Things seem to be as good as they could possibly be here. I have always got the feeling that nobody saw the effect or the iconography of this film coming. I wonder what the sequels will look like on this format, because it seems like more production value was put into them.

Audio

Sound offerings on this release are Dolby Digital EX 5.1 surround or DTS-HD 6.1. For the uninitiated, it wasn't until the other Rambo films that Rambo became an explosive action experience. This movie is almost quiet at times as we see our main character trying to figure out his next course of action. This movie takes place in the hills and it seems that Director Ted Kotcheff wanted it to filled with natural ambiance. The soundtrack itself, the music, isn't pulsating but rather steady, and this plays well with the images of our main character on the screen. I never felt blown away by the audio but I was highly engaged watching this film in this format.

Package

Rambo on the ground clutching a knife is the main image on this Blu-ray cover. Actually, the majority of the image is simply Sylvester Stallone's head. The back portion of this cover has some shots from this movie, a description of what Rambo: First Blood is about, a Special Features listing and system specs. The biggest problem with this Blu-ray packaging is that it doesn't leave any room for them to put in any Rambo inspired goodies.

Final Word

I remember the first time I saw this movie. I had never seen anything like it. Stallone talks about how this character was one of the first to take up arms against his government, but those thoughts weren't in my head. I just loved this story of a guy who had been pushed so far and now he was doing a little pushing of his own. Every facet of this movie is tense. From the opening frame John Rambo is a character who seems destined to clash with society. How he looks, how he carries himself, and how he can't seem to communicate with other people. When you add this tension with the action contained in Rambo: First Blood, the mixture ends up being a very viscerally appropriate movie-watching experience.

On Blu-ray disc, I found that Rambo: First Blood was more intense than it had been since I first saw it in the movie theater years ago. The picture is beyond crisp and the audio reminded me of why I fell in love with this film in the first place. It is so tense and so action packed, I almost feels like a horror movie.