Rambo (First Blood) USA 1982
Director: Ted Kotcheff, writer: Michael Kozoll & William Sackheim, Sylvester Stallone, book by David Morell, Camera: Andrew Laszlo, Music: Jerry Goldsmith Editor: Joan Chapman
Starring: Sylvester Stallone (John Rambo), Brian Dennehy (Will Teasle), Richard Crenna (Samuel Trautman), Jack Starrett (Arthur Galt), David Caruso (Deputy Mitch), Michael Talbott (Deputy Balford)
Synopsis: The Vietnam veteran John Rambo , former member of an elite unit of gigs around since the end of the war by the United States without the strong goal of life. When he comes in his walk through a typical American small town, where he is quickly taken up by the local sheriff who keeps him because of his unkempt appearance for a hobo. He brings to the city limits, making it clear not to come back. But John Rambo has little desire to be simply deported Sun When he does return back to the way in the city, he takes the Sheriff determined summarily. The narrowness of the prison and the mistreatment of some deputies to break out his war trauma, and he begins to fight back ...
THE OUTSIDER: need overproduction notes or similar trivia we, I think, not to speak because the movie before the most likely to be known. Let us therefore equal in medias res. If we look today, at least a quarter of a century later, the film falls on its first incredible complexity. In his very best, the film reminds of the great dramas returnees and integrates these same mood in the spectacle of the action genre. Here RAMBO, despite its thematic multi-dimensionality of veterans contempt, rabid patriotism, American-smug narrow-mindedness and unable to cold- Formal military apparatus, a film about the narrowness and hopelessness. From the beginning, after the image is drawn, it goes to a lake-view. From there, the film made only a narrowing of space and choice. Internally replaced John Rambo a damper because his last boyfriend, he really wanted to visit, died of cancer, an immediate increase ominous music on the soundtrack to the pressure. When Rambo is then moved to the town of Hope, right, amplified by a rock wall and the containment of the mountains is called the sense of hopelessness.
RADIO HUNDD: Aha, so let's start with the theory of space! Yes, the whole Film is restricted and that, even though he plays in the very freedom associated with frontier landscape of North America. But even in the majestic mountains of the far North American West, once home to many adventurers and pioneers, philistine and Rednecktum have already gained ground and pressed their environment the stamp. Instead of the "real" wilderness we have here announced on the signs Hopes "Holiday Land": a nature which has degenerated to the theme park in the original scale, on that verlustieren the weekend warriors there with fire-arms and Flitzebogen. No wonder that a drifter like Rambo in Hope was by his mere presence Contempt and distrust captivate you. His escape from prison (who reminds him of the prisoner in Vietnam) in the mountains is also a kind of liberation or even unleashing of this nature: If Rambo melts into the surrounding woods, the weather is using for its purposes, and from nowhere strikes, then he shows the hapless would-be adventurers Hopes a completely foreign, dangerous world, one that can not be tamed. Bildkompositorisch reflected in the dismal gray, the colors, the clothes can be damp at the mere reputation, in the narrow focus, which allows only rare overview and allows the protagonists of most of the huge mountains dominate, resist.
A: This close it's also the trauma of Vietnam, Rambo justified. He can not be locked up - a glance at the bars of the prison comes to him the memory of his captivity in Vietnam - and must take refuge in the great outdoors. But because America is no longer a land of pioneers and the boundaries are stuck, it remains only to become one with the forest. The now obvious for years and is uprooted in the U.S. wandering John Rambo is no place in civilization. For the drill with hard drugs and artificial breeding of fighting machines you have in times of peace no longer in use. Rather, they interfere, they remember But in an unpopular war that would like to forget any of a trauma for the country itself (one of the largest) is. Irony of fate now that this very special training that makes him break into the home so difficult to walk, enabling him to disappear in the 
forests in which the inhabitants of the city's Hope to be at home, and for the convert it into a pursuing sheriff (war) hell. These (geo) morphological approach Teasle confronted Sheriff and his arrogant young-subordinates with a dimension of horror to them until then a stranger. For the young deputies Vietnam seems far away. A historical Event with which they have nothing else to do. This reflects very well the spirit of America reflected in the early 1980s.
FH: Yes, Rambo brings the war home, and it is quite interesting that the kind of fight, which he perfectly mastered and practiced, is the former enemy: the guerrilla warfare. If the U.S. him, the Vietnam veteran, for the values of his country in the safe distance from the killing machine - you could also say, on the other - has been drilled, it will no longer want to take her, then he needs his country just in the place to turn on the turn, but he is at home. This is really exciting about RAMBO: He works with a double Concept of home. The former home, his country is for Rambo long been a stranger, Vietnam - both the real place and a mental condition - is his true home. His return, therefore ends in a turn inward. He stripped, as you correctly said, for years, "to arrive" by the United States without. At the finish he is again only when he can be the fighter in the chain and the forests of Oregon into the jungles of Vietnam. The roles are now reversed, the hunters become the hunted, like the peace breakers are one by one made of Rambo. And after he defended his room, he goes on the attack and with the war then in the Center of Hope. Incidentally, the name is indeed a bad joke, because the way forward, which is connected with the concept of hope have bought its inhabitants with a total isolation from the past, both mentally and physically just. Rambo and now gives them the necessary exposure therapy.
A: Very good brought to the point! The combined force with which he transformed the North American forests into a second Vietnam, is already visible on the exterior of Sylvester Stallone. Muscled and scarred is, inevitably one the impression of a fighting machine. On figural level there is a very personal conflict between Rambo and Sheriff Teasle, this is rather forced by the latter. Teasle repeatedly emphasized that he wants Rambo dead. What at the beginning nor his duty may be owed as Sheriff developed after the death of his friend Galt, who drove through his fanaticism, the hunt for the tip, for Rambo to Point Of No Return and Teasle to a personal matter, in he is putting on to get Rambo. He would indeed alive, but later in talking to Trautman he admits that he called the "boys" would necessarily want to kill. This contradiction can only conclude that Teasle wanted to do it at all costs themselves. He saw the capture of Rambo, he would have done best man to man, his chance to bag another trophy. Kotcheff describes him very well when he returns to his office frustrated and it looks as though the National Guard killed Rambo. In a very narrow attitude - which refers again to the mood of hopelessness - Teasle sits at his desk, in Hinterergrund a hawk and three medals from the military service, in the foreground with sign next to a stuffed lynx. Rambo's head, he could not get to hang.
FH: What makes Rambo is not only his immense skill and the control of arms, but above all his capacity for suffering. This property is anyway a central motif in the action film, which serves the particular hero to a real savior figure stylize. The violence almost obsessive action film of the eighties by the trend its peak. How much this John Rambo the pain is accustomed is clearly in the one you already mentioned scene in prison when we indeed be muscular, but sinewy and somewhat emaciated and get to torture scarred body to face, no comparison to the inflated machine is from part two and three. After his escape, Rambo runs in the freezing cold of winter, dressed only in a vest around, then he falls then in a suicidal act of desperation from a cliff into a tree, he incurs a deep flesh wound on his arm, which he shortly afterwards professional self-sewn: a scene that exceeded the third part yet to be . Finally - the height of his passion - he is even buried alive when the National Guard, a bunch of great kids with war toys, the entrance to the mine in which he is in hiding, burst and include it with the rats under the earth. It is easy not to get broken, that makes him a natural for Teasle desirable victims trophy. Especially since he thus indeed be quite can make private statement to the Vietnam War.
A: If Teasle Rambo called a machine, then this is even in a figurative sense, even if to expire at the Vietnam Veteran the jungle survival program seems like a machine. In the sequels, then this is already visible on the outside, but we will come later. As for the statement, you talk to a really interesting point. The generation that represents Will Teasle represented, that is like the position that the Vietnam War but was not a real war and it really should be, when the returned to "wimps" in the war rather taken drugs have or are simply just freaked out. But as John Rambo he aptly says, as he has all made of Teasle men unable to fight and keep same is a knife to his throat: "Stop it, or you will have a war that you will never understand."
FH : I was wondering whether Teasle name is a talking. It sounds like not a little "tease" of what so much "irritate" as means. In fact, it seems that "bum" who comes to his town, almost wanting to provoke a violation of the law.
A: When we come to Col. Trautman, we have a Figure that the seemingly more 
corresponds to imagine how the Americans their military. Like a tin soldier, he is in the first shot, which introduces him as provided with medals, edged and mastered. Accordingly, its military language, with which he not only refers to permanent Rambo's invincibility, but indirectly also praises the glory days, in which she "had all the blood and guts" to the knees in.
FH: Trautman is extremely mechanical and wooden, and downright strange slowed misplaced under "normal" people. Probably the only way this stiffness, in the face of war atrocities not insane or so to collapse, like Rambo does in the end. And you realize Trautman also indicates that he (still) not used to is no longer active in combat to take part, but now working from his desk: a sign that in him a conflict is raging, got the at Rambo to the outbreak is. Kotcheff Trautman shows no longer on the battle field, so in the woods, but in the security of the mobile command center of the National Guard. Only at the very end, just before it comes to a major disaster, he lets him actively intervene - a view of the third part, which shows another Colonel Trautman. In the literature, the film is often called the father figure for Trautman Rambo called. That reminded me his relationship with John Rambo more like that of the Creator to his creature: I had to think of Frankenstein and his monster. Trautman says the voluble admiration of a mechanic about the fact that Rambo was drilled to a machine that would eat things that bring ordinary people would immediately want to puke, just to survive. For him, this soldier is a thing that you use, its smooth functioning is admired, but you throw away once it's broken. The moral legitimacy for such an education is never questioned Trautman. But while he talks like that, this Rambo tries again to be human, what both the prejudices of his environment and on its own constitution fails: the war has become indelibly inscribed in it.
A: Unlike admired as Frankenstein Trautman not only what he has made of Rambo, but also what Rambo does. The inability of Traut's the creature itself also to approach emotionally, becomes the final abundantly clear. After Rambo has destroyed the city systematically destroyed by putting the gas station and it stops the fuel supply to paralyze the power and communication lines and chasing the local gun shop in the air, he goes to the police station, as it were the command center. When he made this Teasle and defenseless before him is prevented worse Trautman, Rambo's name by loud screams. Rambo can then indeed on Teasle, but would then go to the gun cabinet to continue its mission, as the police station is now surrounded. Right here is now stopped Rambo fighting program, as Trautman tells him quite strongly that his performance is over. It acts as if he had pressed the power button again and Rambo seems more to rediscover themselves. Suddenly he screams and starts going on his monologue in which he makes clear how much he had to suffer all these years. He leads all the things with which Trautman has never employed and thus reveals the trauma of a nation. When he howled before Trautman breaks down, this detects the first time that Rambo is also a human and not a creation. As Trautman Rambo approach depends on creeps and crying at his waistband, you can see how much effort it costs him to take him into his arms, but it is the least that he has to do for him. His military-rigid posture, he can not give up even then.
FH: Yes while Trautman has all the atrocities successfully sunk in and hides behind a stationary front, the memories of Rambo permeate in the final with a vengeance to the surface. What level of suffering has happened to him, is not in the brief seconds images of torture, the Rambo of the fare can be had, most impressively illustrated, but implicit in a dialogue at the beginning: When Rambo learns that his friend Delmar Berry - a guy like a tree, like Rambo says - from cancer, which he had brought from the war (probably caused by exposure to toxic gases), depleted formally until nothing was left of him was, it is clear how much this has little more John Rambo have armor to survive. Significantly, he is the only one from his company who is still alive. Through this unique position he gets almost martyr-like features, this played into the Sequels to even the masochistic. But it is not only the terrible experiences of the War, Rambo can ultimately collapse, but a disruption of his being: Rambo is not only machine, not just a program, not only creation, he was born to kill and fight. When he holed up in the woods, he is at home. With the self-carved spear and a knife, he takes advantage of the natural allies to disappear, merging with it. In this respect, Rambo combines both pure nature and the Machine. The animal was from the military pressed into a corset, the natural instinct is the fuel for the machine. If she runs again, Rambo can not stop it alone. This requires only Traut's - or one's own death. Rambo Suffering is an inner and an outer.
A: is very interesting then and the final image to interpret. If Rambo is removed, Trautman does not differ more from his side now, he looks into the distance and seems to fix something at the same time. The view is so trapped that Stallone seems to sit and watch directly over the audience. At that moment, freezes the image by Kotcheff and the song "It's a long road," sung by Dan Hill, is heard. While the total credits will see the statue and seeing this across to the viewers eye. One could say that this brief moment that John Rambo between caused by him has chaos and impending prison sentence, a moment of silence is. He looks into the distance, while acting entirely on him. After years of unrest, he is now again a state institution to be handed over and in the few moments between his deployment in Hope and the transition to the patrol car, he is resting in itself
FH: the end I was very irritated, I can even not exactly say why. is to decipher as clear a picture - Looking back, the song where it says further: "Each step is only the beginning", the freeze frame - so it seems with the otherwise very compact film (we said yes to its narrowness) to break, because it goes beyond its narrative framework. But that's the point then just again on the eternal return of the soldier who never arrives at its destination, but always ends up in his past. The way forward and the view this blend back to John Rambo. The home he finds only himself.
