One of my journalism teachers gave a peculiar example in class one day. He called the moment when an article (or a movie) comes out to explain to you just what your dealing with the “Col. Trautman Moment,” in honor of Rambo’s Vietnam War commander who tells Brian Dennehy just how much deep shit he’s in far too late after he’s made Rambo angry.
In journalism we call this a nut graf. It’s an essential ingredient in a good article, but some of the best writers can weave it in naturally without using a line like, “You don’t know what you’re dealing with soldier.”
“First Blood,” or the first of a kajillion Rambo films, is a notoriously dumb and meat-headed ’80s action movie that, despite it’s popularity somehow got away from me until recently because…well, who cares why?
It spawned so many sequels not because it’s the most campy and outrageous action movie you’ve seen from the period or because Sylvester Stallone was such a bankable star after “Rocky” (that fame came after this), but that “First Blood” is an anti-Vietnam War movie. It’s right-wing take on the war was that, it can do real damage to the people like Rambo who come out of it, but the real harm comes from the society that doesn’t respect that these people are doing important work overseas.
This is more or less the mentality today: hate the war, not the soldiers.
So in that way, “First Blood” spat in the face of “The Deer Hunter” and “Apocalypse Now” by making a war movie with a conflicted character but glorified, amped up action. It seems to advertise becoming a super soldier with lines like, “Those green berets are real badassess.”
But I’d be lying if I said the politics were the things that irritated me most about “First Blood.” In capturing Rambo, this small town has absolutely nothing at stake. Everyone here reacts like a hammy tough guy over the littlest bullshit gesture by the war vet. They’re all one-dimensional jerks who can so freely get killed off by the almost horror movie monster that is Rambo. After he escapes, he goes from low-key drifter to Bear Grylls in no time flat. And everything he does is diluted by this dark, ugly and occasionally incoherent film. It’s poorly written, agonizingly low-brow and redneck, and Stallone overacts the hell out of it.
So here’s my Col. Trautman Moment: “I don’t think you understand. This movie is terrible.”