First Blood

Sylvester Stallone achieved amazing heights during the 80's, along with Arnold Schwarzenegger, especially as a movie character synonymous with the muscled guy who is a pure fighting machine…

In Ted Kotcheff's "First Blood," John Rambo (Stallone) is a highly decorated Vietnam veteran who was trained specifically as a killing machine… He has come to a quite little town in Oregon, only to visit one of his platoon buddies… He was told that his friend has died, last summer, of cancer…

Disheartened, Rambo continues to walk the streets of Hope when he is annoyed by the local Sheriff (Brian Dennehy), and booked for vagrancy and resisting arrest…

Beaten, kicked all over, treated like trash, and pushed too far by the other cops in the Sheriff's office, Rambo is taking back to traumatic flashbacks, to the enduring torture in POW camp… Rambo, by that point, fights his way out and wages a one-man war against the police force that escalates out of control... Rambo is seen as a one man army overpowering all the sheriff's deputies and escaping into the surrounding woods…

"First Blood" communicates the rage, the depression, the frustration and the psychological wounds of one Vietnam soldier that fought for his country and was then hassled by it upon his return…

But what makes Rambo such a dangerous hero is Brian Dennehy being incredibly efficient as the cruel officer who doesn't like the looks of Stallone... Sure he's the abusive sheriff who is the victim of his environment, but he's also arrogant and incessantly underestimating a man who was 'the best, with guns, with knives, with his bare hands…'

Dennehy got a presence of his own pushing an 'expert in guerrilla warfare' at the breaking point