Posted on 05/14/2022 11:13:14 PM PDT by pboyington
This year marks the 40th anniversary of Rambo (First Blood) one of the greatest action adventure movies of all time, but more than that, the quintessential film about PTSD and its traumatic effects on combat veterans.
The film stars Sylvester Stallone as John Rambo, Brian Dennehy as Sheriff Will Teasle and Richard Crenna as Colonel Sam Trautman. It was directed by Ted Kotcheff and the screenplay was written by Michael Kozoll & William Sackheim and Sylvester Stallone.
With the Ghosts of Vietnam haunting America in 1982, the film opens with John Rambo walking down a lonely road in the Pacific Northwest. Immediately, we feel Rambo is a man alone in the world; a man who appears to have no one to protect, love or count on. He smiles lightly as he trudges down a rural path wearing a worn US Army olive drab field jacket decorated solely with a US flag patch. He will soon see his buddy Delmar, who served with him on a Special Forces A- Team in Vietnam. Minutes later, he learns that Delmar died of cancer from exposure to Agent Orange. What would be sad to civilians is devastating to Rambo. His world is crumbling around him. Members of the A Team are all gone, except for Rambo. He has no one left in the world. He moves on down a highway towards a small town, where he hopes to find a meal.
Rambo is soon intercepted by Sheriff Will Teasle who views Rambo as just another homeless bum drifting into his town to panhandle and make trouble. He tells Rambo to get a haircut, a bath and to take off the army field jacket. After an altercation when Teasle arrests Rambo for trespassing and resisting arrest, he is taken to the local small town jail. It is there that things go downhill rapidly. The local cops harass Rambo with a firehose shower. They find his dog tags and seem to have no respect for the fact that Rambo was a soldier, although they do not know about his service record…yet. While trying to shave him for his court appearance, Rambo flashes back to time served in a Viet Cong POW camp. He goes ballistic, takes out several deputies and promptly escapes from the police station on a motorcycle.
Rambo leads Teasle and half a dozen deputies on a wild chase which culminates in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest with Rambo escaping and evading with Special Forces aplomb. He uses a burlap tarp as a poncho and extracts a compass from his Randall knife. While chasing Rambo in a river gorge, Teasle and his men learn that Rambo is a highly decorated former Special Forces soldier and Vietnam veteran, who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. To Teasle it means nothing. He labels Rambo a ‘psycho’ as they chase him into a dark forest filled with enough hastily made booby traps to fill a Viet Cong obstacle course. With dogs and deputies immobilized Rambo takes refuge in a cave.
At a nearby base camp, we are introduced to Colonel Sam Trautman, a Special Forces officer dispatched from the Pentagon. Trautman was Rambo’s commander in Nam and he’s there to ‘get his boy and bring him back to Fort Bragg.’ Crenna, who was a US Army WW2 veteran plays the role of Colonel Sam Trautman brilliantly, even though he is ten years too old for the role. With Trautman’s arrival and Teasle’s egocentric pomposity, we are forced to confront a sad reality; it’s the civilian world against the military, a military still haunted by the Ghosts of Vietnam. Sheriff Teasle himself is a decorated veteran, but of the Korean War and his complete lack of respect for those who served in Vietnam is a main component of the tension and generational conflict.
Trautman contacts Rambo, who’s hiding out in a cave on the radio and asks him to surrender himself to the authorities. After telling Trautman that every member of their SF team is now dead, Rambo informs him that there are no friendly civilians and that they drew first blood.
From this point, the film spirals into more violence as National Guard members nearly kill Rambo with a LAW. He escapes from the cave, steals a deuce and a half truck and heads towards the town with a M-60 machine gun in tow.
Upon hearing of Rambo’s death at the hands of the National Guard, Teasle tells Trautman that Rambo was nothing more than a drifter and a vagrant. Trautman responds, ‘That will look great on his tombstone at Arlington. Killed for vagrancy in Jerkwater, USA.”
By nightfall, Rambo begins to destroy the town and then after a final showdown, he wounds Teasle but spares his life. Surrounded by the police, Trautman tells Rambo he must surrender. It is then that Rambo begins to meltdown in front of the only person left whom he can trust. Rambo tells Trautman that when he came home to the world, “Maggots at the airport were spitting on him, calling him a baby killer, that civilian life is nothing, in the field there was a code of honor, back here’s there’s nothing. I could fly a gunship, drive a tank, handle millions of dollars’ worth of equipment. Back here I can’t even hold a job.”
Rambo continues to breakdown while mumbling incoherently about a buddy who was killed and who died in his hands. He is finally consoled by Trautman who embraces him and leads him outside to surrender to the police.
Upon its release, much of the American public viewed the movie simply as a high octane, action-adventure flick. But, veterans knew better. As the film opens, Jerry Goldsmith’s John Rambo theme plays. It is beautiful and haunting and immediately the audience realizes there is something more to this film than gunfire and explosions. This not a traditional action adventure soundtrack with heroes dispatching a myriad of NVA, VC, Hezbollah and Russians to the tune of overly synthesized 1980’s sounds.
More than anything, Rambo is a story about PTSD and its haunting effects on veterans of all conflicts. The film focuses on several facets of PTSD that Rambo is suffering from.
Rambo is a lonely figure, a man seemingly alienated mentally, spiritually and physically from civilian society who at the beginning of the movie searches for one of the last few friends he has in this world. Like many veterans he feels that he can only relate to and trust the men he served in combat with in Vietnam. He is not only searching for his buddy, but also for a meaning to his new life as he meanders through the civilian world in virtual darkness.
While the 1970’s cinematic anti-hero, ex Green Beret Billy Jack fought the external enemy of bigotry in the name of social justice, Rambo is a man battling internal enemies.
Forty years later, in 2022, America has long since vanquished the Ghosts of Vietnam. While only a small percentage of the nation serves in the military, the country embraces its veterans more openly, while the subject of PTSD is better understood by the medical community.
Still, 20% of all veterans from the Iraqi and Afghanistan War, 12% of veterans from the Gulf War and 15% of veterans from the Vietnam War suffer from PTSD. Those numbers represent reported cases. The fact remains that many veterans simply remain silent about any PTSD issues they may have.
As Memorial Day approaches, let us honor the memory of those who made the ultimate sacrifice. But, let us also salute those who suffer every day from PTSD. May they, like John Rambo, find internal peace in a violent world.
The sheriff (the late Brian Dennehy) never listens to me at the beginning of Rambo: “Do not … mess … with Rambo.”
Prayers for all our vets suffering from PTSD. Too many despair. Seems like more should be done for them.
On the positive side - it’s almost over.
The sequel is titled "Rambo" and Stallone and producers make him an American hero and a movie franchise is born.
The movie helped to solidify the image of Vietnam Vets as crazy, out of control misfits.
I’ve watched “First Blood” at least once a year since it first was shown. This write-up relative to PTSD is accurate regarding the movie.
“Billy Jack” was just a cheap, leftist hippy film trying to show them as being victims. Billy was just to add a spark to an otherwise ridiculous movie.
When I was growing up in the late 70's in a small town, a Vietnam Vet born and raised there, would walk down the main drag of the town, in fatigues and cursing to himself all the time.
I think his name was "Benny". Sometimes he would enter the family store, and my mom said to me, treat him with respect, and thank him for his service.
And my mother would say, "poor Benny's mom" since he lived with his mother.
True story, and God Bless all the Vets.
“The movie helped to solidify the image of Vietnam Vets as crazy, out of control misfits.”
It also showed local law enforcement as little despots.
I remember we identified with Rambo completely refusing to cooperate with the sheriffs because he was unjustifiably suspected and arrested.
Re the “Rambo” stigma, PTSD and Agent Orange, may I suggest reading the exceptionally written book by B.G. Burkett (Army, Infantry, Vietnam Vet) titled “Stolen Valor” wherein it offers quite a different view of our fine Vietnam Veterans than Rambo. The posers who claimed service in “Nam” and their horrific acts against civilians and how the Left, Media, Hollywood and politicians exploited Vietnam Veterans for their own reasons is well described with each detailed page, notably researched and worth the read, for it will greatly enlighten one’s view of post-Vietnam thinking and certainly of traitors like John Kerry and his involvement in the Anti-War movement. And to all the authentic Vietnam Vets: “Welcome Home!”
It’s more of a cartoon about it. Heroes with Henry Wrinklier was a lot better.
BTTT
“…the war in Vietnam, which has only been over for about sixteen or seventeen years, and thanks to the lies and deceits surrounding that war, I guess it’s no surprise that the very same condition was called “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.”
Still eight syllables, but we’ve added a hyphen! And the pain is completely buried under jargon. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
I’ll bet you if we’d have still been calling it “Shell Shock”, some of those Vietnam veterans might have gotten the attention they needed at the time.
-George Carlin
Unfortunately
Actually I thought it showed the only people with self control and wits were the Vietnam vets.
“self-control” looks like that to you?
Better word would have been self “discipline”.
I don’t like the government, their cops, and their
abuse of power.
Sorry.
I believe Gordon Lightfoot wrote a song about PTSD. “Summer Side of Life”. One has to listen to the lyrics carefully.
Lightfoot has written a few songs about soldiers and war,”Patriots Dream”, “Drink yer Glasses empty”, and “Echoes of Heroes”
‘Billy Jack’ was ultra cheap, and if it comes on....I’ll watch for 20 minutes.
I don’t watch Vietnam war movies. Been there, done that. Caught about 20 minutes of “Platoon”, while sitting in a bar waiting for a friend. TOTAL, ABSOLUTE, and COMPLETE, BULLSH*T. SO WAS “FIRST BLOOD”. Almost. I saw the entire film (after it had been out for a dozen, or more years, at a friend’s house). The film caught my interest until after the escape from the jail, when it became a comic book. One stupidity after another...(Rambo’s Col. Whositz, wears an SF crest on his brand new misshapen beret which ONLY enlisted men wore on their berets, instead of the Eagle of a “FULL BIRD” Col. that he should have worn on the flasher of his beret. NOT ONE PERSON INVOLVED IN THE MAKING OF THAT FILM SAID TO ANYONE IN CHARGE, “OOPS, EXCUSE ME BUT...”. ‘CAUSE THEY WERE ALL HOLLYWOOD AND NOBODY KNEW.)
But one part, ONE PART ONLY, touched me, and made my tears just flow. ONLY ONE PART WAS REAL. That’s the scene where
Rambo tells his Col. that all the vets only wanted their country to love them like we loved our country. It’s been over 50 years for me now, and I’m crying just writing this very real truth.
That’s the ONLY TRUTH in that film.
EVERYTHING ELSE IS HOLLYWOOD BULLSH*IT. EVERYTHING!
Keep the Faith.
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