Friday, May 16, 2008

Jason watches "First Blood"

Aka, the good Rambo movie. I guess I should've let my readers know, thanks to Fathom Events this played one show only, one night only (last night) at select theaters across the country. It opened with a ~20 minute interview with Stallone, then the movie, then the alternate ending. I'll go ahead and assume everyone knows the movie (if not, you can find it anywhere). In the alternate ending, Rambo dies and there are now sequels. Awesome.

Next Fathom Event--Death Note, for two nights only, May 20 and 21. I saw it at SFIAAFF, it was awesome (although rumor has it not as awesome as the manga).

3 comments:

baceman007 said...

This Rambo movie is the only one that should have been made in my opinion. I enjoyed the 4th movie as well, but it didn't have to be a Rambo movie to be interesting. This movie tries to prove a whole bunch of points about post Vietnam War society, the treatment of our soldiers, and small town police force corruption. So basically it tries to prove a point just like the 4th one reminds us that why we're begging terrorist states like Saudi Arabia for oil there is genocide going on in other parts of the world. You know that thing we said we wouldn't allow to happen at the post WWII Geneva convention. Whoops, I guess it will have to take a back seat to our oil addiction, again. Anyway, this movie has the feeling that it was never supposed to be a series. The character is tragic and does not redeem himself. Instead he lights an town up when things get tough. Sure he was pushed into going nuts, but my point is that the movie starts out with his poor friend dying of agent orange induced cancer, and ends with a town as a war zone. The whole time it is overcast by the fact that if the Sheriff just didn't abuse Rambo nothing bad would have happened. It also gives the viewer a chance to consider the idea of training people to be killing machines, and of course the issues that arise if they "break."

puppymeat said...

I've actually only ever seen "First Blood", never saw any of the other movies, including the 4th (which I've heard other people say was good).

Interesting, they played a brief interview with Stallone before the movie (unfortunately, no subtitles so I only understood about half). But he essentially said the same thing, that the 2nd and 3rd movies became macho Cold War posturing, and were worthy of the ridicule they get. He's very proud of the 4th movie, so maybe I'll check out the DVD.

baceman007 said...

Well sometimes you have to beat people over the head with real world events. We can't forget that genocide is going on in other parts of the world just because we've foolishly committed the bulk of our military to an operation to secure oil, and protect the president's interests, etc.
On a side note it cracks me up that we can still basically be shut down by the middle east. All they have to do is stop the supply of the 10 - 15% of oil that they give us. Seems like we should have developed new fuel technology when they pulled this shit in the 70's, but anyway I don't want to rant about how vulnerable we are simply by keeping a relationship for any resource with a terrorist state like Saudi Arabia, sorry we don't say officially that they are yet. Our president just begs them for oil, like we're heroin addicts and can't live without it even though we're so powerful, have developed technology to replace it, etc.
Anyway, this movie brings to light some horrific events that were/are going on at the same time that we're feeding out oil addiction. That point is worth mentioning again. The 4th Rambo is a great example of a movie that can entertain and hopefully bring about some change even when our other forms of media lie to us and/or turn a blind eye to what is going on. It's nice when movies reach for more than dollars and put it in a format that even idiots can sit through. God job Mr. Stallone.