First Blood

Hunting the wolf

"We don't need people like you here.

At first glance, "First Blood" is a reference action movie of the early 80s, where the whole action is built not so much for the entertainment of the viewer, but to create such a viscous thriller atmosphere of the bloody dance of hunter and victims, where the accents are placed so that the partners of this dance periodically change places, but the outcome of the hunt is predetermined from the beginning.
And my impressions of such an action are twofold. In many ways, because I couldn't get into the character of John Rambo, and I empathized more with the rest of the characters than with his figure.
Yes, of course, I understand both the cause and the effect, and maybe some of his actions can even be justified, but I don't want to justify them. John is primarily a murderer and a terrorist. Undoubtedly, his traumatic past is a mitigating circumstance, and he deserves sympathy and any possible help, but at the same time he deserves punishment, and maybe, no matter how radical it may sound, even death and the peace that it will bring to his tortured soul.
The police and some civilians here are somewhat grotesquely portrayed as assholes, so that John Rambo looks like a victim against their background, and for some, a hero, but the conflict that started it all was resolved by a banal conversation, and therefore there is no justification for all further violence on both sides. However, there is no excuse for him in other, more serious conflicts.

I may have liked the way it was shot, but otherwise the movie doesn't work for me. Even John's final monologue may be so good at piercing the soul, but I have a dissonance with these words and his behavior throughout the film. I think the authors went too far with the demonstrations of the mess caused by the character and did not do enough to show him as a hunted victim, and not as a madman with manic tendencies. It's a good action movie, a good thriller, but for me personally it's also a bad drama. That's not why people loved Rambo, not at all. And a book version of the ending would be much more appropriate here.