Sylvester Stallone Is "John Rambo", a Vietnam War veteran who is shocked to learn that the only other survivor from his crack team of Green Berets has died of a pretty pernicious cancer. He wanders aimlessly looking for a cheeseburger when he is escorted out of town by the sheriff "Will Teasle" (Brian Dennehy), who takes him for a vagrant. When he tries to come back into town, he is arrested and that sets off a chain of events that ends up pitting him against not just a rather brutal collection of local law enforcement, but ultimately the pretty useless national guard and his old CO "Trautman" (Richard Crenna). There is certainly a serious message here. This man has served his country at no small risk to himself, he even has a Congressional Medal of Honour, but has been pretty much abandoned by his government. We learn fairly early on that he has clearly been traumatised by his wartime experiences and the hostile behaviour of the local cops serves to rekindle his serious ninja skills in self-defence that quickly - though reluctantly - became self-offence. The action scenes set amongst the cold, wet and dense forest are tautly directed and quite compelling to watch, but I am afraid the acting is pretty poor. Crenna is about as wooden as one of the stakes "Rambo" uses to impale his pursuers, and the "Teasle" character just doesn't add up. We start the film with him behaving in a friendly and neighbourly way as might befit a local policeman, but after the most minimal exposure to his visitor, he turns into a violently obsessed man. Why? There is no backstory to this - and as the manhunt proceeds, and concludes, the story itself makes less and less sense. It's quite short and the first half is good, but afterwards it just slips into the ridiculous with an ending full of impressive pyrotechnics but little more substantial than a warning that we ought to expect a sequel.
