I’ve never seen a Rambo film. In fact, I knew so little about the franchise I had trouble finding a copy of “Rambo” to watch — because it’s called First Blood. I wasn’t allowed to watch war movies as a kid.

Before I begin a quick note: I love 90 minute films. Fellini’s La Dolce Vita is damn near three hours long, I’m having trouble scheduling it, and I’m unemployed.

John Rambo is a weaponized man who finds himself unable to integrate back into the society that created him. The character isn’t an archetype, he’s a stereotype. That’s essentially Ebert’s problem with the film.

But I disagree. I haven’t see a lot of veteran’s angst on screen. I doubt anyone in my generation has. It’s coming though — if the 70s and 80s are any indication we can look forward to 15 or so years soaked in Iraq and Afghan war vets as characters. “You think hipsters have authenticity problems? I watched a 12 year old girl suicide-detonate a tent full of my friends and now the only job I can get is as a birthday clown!”

Rambo is the exceptional man forced into dull conformity, and it grates on his soul. The film is another part of the masculine discourse examining the fundamental opposition between authoritarianism and authenticity. Rambo lives authentically and wins society’s plaudits — the medal of honor, a plot in Arlington — until low-level functionaries of that same system torture him past the point of no return. The movie was filmed in BC and makes good use of Hope as the place denied Rambo by society.

John Rambo works fully for me as a character. Not only does Stallone invest him with physical plausibility, but also a kind of good-hearted incompetence with other people, where not killing them is as kind as he can be (Rambo actually kills no one in First Blood, giving him the moral high ground throughout). That “kindness” actually comes through, the character works, and his final speech resonates with me as much as the helicopter scene Ebert writes about does. Perhaps more — Rambo spends the whole movie basically silent and then erupts into an effective, passionate monologue at the climax.

The novel’s ending, however, sounds a lot more dramatically satisfying: Teasle and Rambo mutually annihilate. The authoritarian and the rebel cancel each other out, za-zen style.

A suicide ending makes the most sense for the film, because the thematic tone is that the outlaw can never successfully resist the group, but the one they filmed wasn’t any good. I understand why Ebert didn’t like the ending they settled on: Ahab subdues the Whale and delivers him to Seaworld, allowing the beast to return in as many Free Willy sequels as the studio will fund.

While I was (lightly) researching the film I came across a surprising list of movies that it ran against on Wikipedia. Just for fun, here’s 1982′s box office competition:

• First Blood
• E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (zeitgeist!)
• Tootsie
• Porky’s (the highest-grossing Canadian film to-date).
• Rocky III
• Blade Runner
• Poltergeist

Save Rocky III that’s a lotta classics — good job, Hollywood ’82!