We all know that movies are unrealistic representations of real life. While some things depicted in them could potentially maybe happen in real life, the reality is that they would likely never happen in the way they are presented. Having said that, it seems like there is one movie that is surprisingly realistic despite what skeptics might believe, and that is Rambo: First Blood.
Featuring Sylvester Stallone and released in 1982, this move introduces John Rambo as a former Special Forces soldier that now, after returning home from the Vietnam War finds out that a friend has died from complications related to Agent Orange exposure while they were deployed, making him the sole survivor of his outfit.
The movie then takes a turn, when we find him going into the town of Hope, Washington and being accosted by local Sheriff Will Teasle, who judges him harshly and presumes him to be a drifter. What follows is a cat and mouse hunt between Rambo and the Sheriff, with the Sheriff trying to kill him at every turn and even bringing reinforcements to bring him down. While this would never happen in real life in a small town in the middle of nowhere, especially in the 80’s when the militarization of the police force had not already happened, most critics focused on the lack of realism in the techniques used by our protagonist to escape capture and certain death.
Spoiler alert, the movie does not end in an uplifting tone, as Rambo shoots, but not kills the Sheriff and surrenders, letting himself be brought into custody by a sympathetic federal agent who understands where he is coming from and the circumstances that have led him to this place.
Rambo First Blood, a realistic take on the post war abilities of veterans
Of course, the movie is a dramatization, but it turns out it is not as out of the left field as we are led to believe. Forty years after its release, real life former Special Ops member Bob Kellar reflected on the movie and detailed his thoughts on why Rambo’s abilities in the movie are pretty much exactly what he would expect to see in a real life situation.
“Classic, I always wanted to be Rambo. What kid didn’t? Rambo First Blood is going off of a, like he’s an SF guy from Vietnam. All this stuff would be 100% legit. Like as an SF guy, being in the woods, like you’ll be trained on booby traps, and all these tactics. But are you getting a lot of it? Like you might get one class. Now some guys will actually train on this, on survival stuff, all the time. John Rambo trained on that all the time. He had done it in Vietnam for years and years. Like that’s probably ingrained in his head. Like, you’re done. I mean cause he knows how to live in the woods, right? So, 100%. This is legit.
In this situation, he’s not wanting any trouble. They push it upon him and now he has to use his skills. I think most Special Ops guys getting out of the military do continue to do that in other organizations. Or they do it, you know, create their own business doing it. It’s kind of because for one you might miss it. And for others, it’s just all you know. Like if you go in the military at 17 years old. So yes, that happens. Even though the scenes might look a little bit hanky. But the reality of it, of this guy doing all that stuff to these guys and it being that easy? 100% legit. I mean I give it a 9.5, easy. I mean it’s almost a full 10.”
High praise from someone who undoubtedly knows what they are talking about. While the sequels were not as grounded as this first movie, they are still worth a watch purely based on their entertainment value, but it is important to realize that sometimes Hollywood does take a good story and tells it faithfully.