First Blood (1982) poster
1982 · action

First Blood

Directed by Ted Kotcheff1h 33m1982
ElsewhereIMDb7.7299kRT86%Metacritic61TMDB7.57k
  • sombre
  • kinetic
  • extreme
Movie DNA

Sombre, breathless, extreme action, grounded in texture. Ambivalent, mid-stakes, cold.

How every film is hand-scored →

When former Green Beret John Rambo is harassed by local law enforcement and arrested for vagrancy, he is forced to flee into the mountains and wage an escalating one-man war against his pursuers.

Our read · First Blood (1982) reads as a sombre, breathless, grounded action entry — extreme in intensity, mid-stakes in scope, cold in temperature, ambivalent in outlook.

Where the cast leads
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The shape of First Blood

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want a lean survival thriller about a veteran pushed too far by small-town cops.

ends bittersweetit stays with yougrabs you earlygrips by minute 8attention 4/5breezes by
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around
Heads-upgraphic violence

Skip it tonightYou are not in the mood for Vietnam trauma and escalating violence tonight.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
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