Classic Movie

Guns + big hair = PAAAAAIIIIN!

	What this law-loving moron doesn’t realise is that he’s dealing with one-man wrecking/flashback machine, John J Rambo

Rambo (1984)

The plot: A brooding loner with a thousand-yard stare and a fluffy bouffant visits his last remaining ‘Nam buddy, realises he’s already dead and then mopes around the town like a moody teenage girl. Pushy local sheriff Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy), who doesn’t like anyone to give him ‘any horseshit about jurisdiction’, takes exception to this wispy drifter and arrests him because he doesn’t like the cut of his jib. What this law-loving moron doesn’t realise is that he’s dealing with one-man wrecking/flashback machine, John J Rambo – a decorated Vietnam vet, Green Beret, Congressional Medal of Honour winner, and generally considered by even the toughest of nuts to be a hairdryer short of a salon. You don’t push him or he gives you a war you won’t believe.

So what happens? Rambo gives Teasle a war he wouldn’t have believed. First he beats up a whole station full of punchy, overweight coppers after one heavy-handed peeler gets a bit fruity with a baton. Then he goes on the run and hides out in places with stupid names like Cooper’s Canyon and Hogback Ridge, makes 200 of the National Guard look like a tinpot scout group and ends up being the most exotic vandal the silver screen’s ever seen, successfully blowing up pretty much the whole village before turning himself over to the slightly retarded authorities.

Why’s it a classic? Colonel Samuel Trautman, Rambo’s ex-platoon leader who is drafted in to diffuse the situation, spouts the most sanctimonious lines in cinematic history and Brian Dennehy, the Fred Flintstone of law enforcement, is the best villain in the increasingly more ridiculous Rambo series. In no way as impactful now as it was in 1984, First Blood doesn’t really "drop H-Bombs for action movies" any more, but is still a frothy protein shake that properly tickles your funny bone.