Though released in 1982, First Blood owes more to the righteous vigilante films of the 70s and post-Vietnam dramas like Deer Hunter and Coming Home than it serves as a predictor of the ‘comic book’ action films of the 80s, even the film’s own increasingly preposterous sequels. It’s a lean, propulsive yet soulful film that demands contemplation as it thrills.
First Blood was the last time Stallone sought to inhabit a real character until many years later when he made…
When I first saw The Road Warrior in the early Eighties when I was 10 or so, it immediately supplanted Star Wars as the coolest movie I’d ever seen. I was obsessed with it, and I still consider it the greatest post-apocalypse movie ever and in the running for best action movie, period. It’s just the perfect synthesis of mad vision and action mayhem. If George Lucas borrowed from westerns to build his space fantasy, Miller embraces the genre in…
For a brief time when I was a kid I got into karate. That was mostly on account of Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris, but, as a kid from the Valley, I’d be lying if I said The Karate Kid didn’t have a little to do with it as well.
The movie endures for a reason. It remains one of the best sports movies and teen dramas of the 1980s, which I suppose puts it in the upper echelon of both those categories in film history.
As is often the case with these sorts of long-form documentaries, the filmmakers try essentially to tell the entire history of the modern Western world over eight or so hours. In this case it’s filtered though the lens of a single year’s popular music. And they do a decent enough job of it. But because it tries to do so much, it’s ultimately neither a particularly illuminating historical study nor compelling exploration of the rock music of the period. Invariably,…
This film introduced two compelling mysteries to unravel: why I chose to watch it and what possessed me to finish it after waking from a blissful sleep.
