Cinema

This special ops expert is blown away by Stallone’s survival skills in ‘First Blood’: “100% legit”

Sylvester Stallone has been given “almost a full 10″ for the realism of his exploits as John Rambo in the 1982 classic ‘First Blood’.

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William Allen

British journalist and translator who joined Diario AS in 2013. Focuses on soccer – chiefly the Premier League, LaLiga, the Champions League, the Liga MX and MLS. On occasion, also covers American sports, general news and entertainment. Fascinated by the language of sport – particularly the under-appreciated art of translating cliché-speak.

Update: Apr 14th, 2025 19:18 EDT

A special ops expert has described the depiction of John Rambo’s combat and survival skills in First Blood as “100% legit”, declaring that he would give the 1982 movie close to full marks for realism.

What is First Blood about? Movie synopsis

First Blood stars Sylvester Stallone as Rambo, a Vietnam veteran who has just returned to the U.S.

Having unfairly become the target of a manhunt by a small-town police force, Rambo draws on all his experience as a special forces soldier to defend himself in the wilderness of the Washington state woods.

“A veteran Green Beret is forced by a cruel sheriff and his deputies to flee into the mountains and wage an escalating one-man war against his pursuers,” reads a synopsis of the film on the IMDb online movie database.

And according to Bob Keller, a former special forces and Delta Force operator with the U.S. Army, First Blood offers a believable portrayal of the strategies Rambo uses.

“He knows how to live in the woods, right?”

“I always wanted to be Rambo - what kid didn’t?” Keller told an interview with Insider earlier this month.

“All this stuff would be 100% legit,” he added. “As an SF [special forces] guy being in the woods, you’ll be trained in booby traps and all these tactics.”

Rambo’s special forces training would give him a crucial advantage over others without the same level of preparation, Keller tells Insider.

“Some guys [in special forces] will actually train on this, like, survival stuff all the time,” he explains. “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.

“You’re done - I mean, because he knows how to live in the woods, right? So, 100%. This is legit.”

Although he admits that some scenes “look a bit hinky”, Keller concludes: “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.”

But while First Blood passes Keller’s reality check, Stallone himself says he’s often told the opposite by military veterans who stop him on the street.

“You don’t know what you’re doing”

“They say, ’You don’t know what you’re doing,‘” the 78-year-old Oscar nominee revealed in a recent interview on NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

“[They say:] ’You cannot take on half the world with a knife. It just doesn’t work...

“’You cannot take a gun that usually is mounted on a helicopter, hold it with one arm, wrap bullets around your neck and just run through the woods naked, and actually accomplish anything.‘”

First Blood - watch the official trailer:

A franchise spanning several decades

Based on David Morrell’s 1972 novel of the same name, First Blood was the opening instalment in a long-running, popular film franchise.

The movie took around $50 million at the U.S. box office, before 1985’s First Blood Part II proved the series’ biggest success, tripling the first film’s earnings.

Three further pictures have followed - Rambo III (1988), Rambo (2008) and Last Blood (2019) - while the franchise has also spawned comics, video games and an animated series.