First Blood (1982) on Netflix
Vietnam veteran John Rambo arrives in the town of Hope, Washington, where Sheriff Will Teasle arrests him for vagrancy. Abused by the deputies, Rambo escapes into the mountains.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb7.7/10305,864 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes86%
Trailer
Plot summary
John Rambo, a Vietnam War veteran and Medal of Honor recipient, is the last surviving member of his old unit. Wandering on foot, he reaches the small town of Hope, Washington, where Sheriff Will Teasle drives him out and tells him he is not welcome. When Rambo walks back, Teasle arrests him, and chief deputy Art Galt and the other deputies abuse him during processing. The treatment triggers memories of torture he endured in Vietnam, and Rambo overpowers the deputies, takes back his field knife and flees on a stolen motorcycle. Teasle gathers deputies, dogs and air support and takes up the hunt in the hills.
Cast
- Don MacKayas Preston (as Don Mackay)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about First Blood (1982)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Morrell said the novel's adaptation was held up for ten years by shifting studio options. When the book came out, Lawrence Turman at Columbia Pictures bought the film rights for $175,000, with Richard Brooks slated to direct an allegory on differing American perceptions of World War II and Vietnam War veterans.
- Through the film's long development in the 1970s, actors and directors loosely attached to or considered for the project included Clint Eastwood, Al Pacino, Paul Newman, James Caan, Robert Redford, Burt Reynolds and Steve McQueen.
- Ted Kotcheff, who had been involved in the project back in 1976, returned after Kassar and Vajna offered to finance one of his own projects. He offered the role of John Rambo to Sylvester Stallone, who accepted after reading the script through in a day.
- In January 1982 over $50,000 worth of firearms, including fourteen M16 rifles, three Remington shotguns, two .44 Magnum revolvers and eleven Colt AR-15s, were stolen from the set. Afterwards the set was guarded by the Canadian Army, whose soldiers also served as extras.
- Injuries to the cast during stunts caused further delays, with Stallone sustaining a serious back injury and several broken ribs, in particular from performing his own stunt of dropping off a cliff and into a tree.
- First Blood was the first major Hollywood blockbuster released in China, arriving there in 1985, and it sold 76 million tickets, the highest figure for a foreign Hollywood film until 2018.
- Rambo's survival knife became an iconic movie weapon: at a 28 July 2013 auction the original knife and its sheath sold for $92,250, and even a set of 100 replicas produced by Lile in 1982 have been valued at $45,000 each.
- On 14 August 2020 a cedar wood statue of Rambo was unveiled in Hope, Canada, 38 years after the film's release, with Mayor Peter Robb, local MP Mark Strahl and the statue's sculptor Ryan Villers at the ceremony.
