Critics reviews

[First Blood] arrived at that sweet spot when Sly was still an Oscar-nominated actor and screenwriter (for Rocky) and had yet to become a cartoon parody of himself... Stallone brought intense physicality, obviously, but also hangdog vulnerability to a character who takes revenge on a cruel, unfeeling establishment and utters some of the most iconic lines in shoot’em’up history.

[A] watchable if entirely preposterous exploitation-action picture... Devotees of old-school 80s action will enjoy this all over again... But for me, Rambo never had the wit or the dramatic limberness of Bruce Willis’s John McClane in the Die Hard series.

Wait for the keystone moment: a monologue from Stallone frantically distills the atrocities of war and his utter displacement, a testament to his acting skills beyond Rocky (seriously), and cements a bold recognition of lingering terror, so much so that it brought this author (a child of the 80s) to shed a tear.

First Blood was a trailblazer... Not only did it help revolutionise independent film financing, it paved the way for the era’s action boom and spawned the hugely successful Rambo franchise.

As a Stallone vehicle this is sleek, slick and not unexciting, but crassly castrates the David Morrell novel on which it is based. Read the book: tough, provocative, savagely ironical and infinitely more complex, it's much better value.

Ted Kotcheff goes with the storyline rather than the cliché. Stallone is fully committed. The excitement is switched on. [First Blood] has weathered well.

Not yet the bellicose icon of the sequels, Rambo is here a short-circuiting bazooka... As befits a tale of ingrown conflict, Ted Kotcheff lays out the guerrilla action in Panavision constructions derived from Anthony Mann: Craggy ravines are arduously climbed, the bowels of a cave are swarming with rodents, only explosions illuminate the darkness engulfing the obliterated town.

A tight, atmospheric, and well-acted thriller, First Blood doesn't show its hand ideologically until Stallone's final monologue... Expertly shot by cinematographer Andrew Laszlo (The Warriors), First Blood made far less money than its sequel, but it's a much better film.

Stallone underwent training in survival skills and hand-to-hand combat that helped give the film such a raw and authentic edge... This didn't prevent his by now standard hospital visits while making a film. Four broken ribs and a burned hand were some of the injuries he sustained portraying the cinema's most famous one-man army.

As well as the sociopolitical fun to be had, and the deeply satisfying fact that once again America got hold of the wrong end of the cultural stick, there's the fact that First Blood is a first-rate, taught action thriller. Ted Kotcheff... paces the film superbly.

It isn't just a film about someone who has almost lost the power of speech, it is fundamentally a silent film. Silent about all the big questions whose formulations it delays as much as possible. Silent about buried causes and ultimate motives, silent in the face of violence and nature. We should be grateful to Stallone to have re-invented for this film an acting style with wide-eyes and gazes as expressive as semaphores.

An ambitious, bloody, talented but pulpy mess... [First Blood] lacks the precision that would raise it above pretentious action melodrama, and it is overly reminiscent of too many other movies, especially Southern Comfort.