First Blood

Orion Pictures Corporation | Release Date: October 22, 1982

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

61	METASCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 15 Critic Reviews

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Mixed:

Negative:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

EmpireAdam Smith

There's the fact that First Blood is a first-rate, taught action thriller. Read full review

Eric Frederiksen

First Blood is not the Rambo movie we initially think of when the character is mentioned. No, it’s much better than that. Read full review

Rita Kempley

Stallone is feral this film, physically powerful; he's muddy and bloody, but he's still pretty even in a tarpaulin. He's the wild child coming home. First Blood is good to the last drop, if you like that sort of thing. [22 Oct 1982, p.17]

Roger Ebert

Until the last twenty or thirty minutes, however, First Blood is a very good movie, well-paced, and well-acted not only by Stallone (who invests an unlikely character with great authority) but also by Crenna and Brian Dennehy, as the police chief. Read full review

TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)

Boasting some of the best use of rugged landscape since the westerns of Anthony Mann, First Blood is an effective, if outlandish, picture that exists merely for its big-screen thrills. Read full review

James Berardinelli

The darker tone, somber subtext, and generally non-exploitative violence allow viewers to enjoy the film not only as an action/thriller but as something with a degree of intelligence and substance. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

For most of the film, the non-stop action is totally involving, and Stallone gives a dynamic performance that could break him out of the Rocky groove. [11 Oct 1982]

Dave Kehr

The director, Ted Kotcheff, does a good job with the violence and suspense, working well with the wide-screen format, and he seems fully aware of the dark, subversive implications of the material, even if the screenplay doesn't allow him to resolve them successfully. Read full review

Janet Maslin

It's a film with a number of strengths, not the least of them its fierce, agile, hollow-eyed hero. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

As a Stallone vehicle this is sleek, slick and not unexciting, but crassly castrates the David Morrell novel on which it is based. Read full review

David Ansen

As a macho fantasy, First Blood is successful. But by the time it comes to its sobering, let's-put-this-all-in-a-sane-perspective conclusion, one has a right to feel powerfully misused. [25 Oct 1982, p.119]

Bruce McCabe

Ted Kotcheff's First Blood is a cute, slick anti-Vietnam war film carefully treated to go down for the pro-war constituency it's made for. [23 Oct 1982]

Jay Scott

First Blood is a gung-ho action flick fast enough and brutal enough to become Stallone's first non-Rocky hit; on the profound sympathetic levels it seeks to address, however, it is an emission of profound stupidity. [22 Oct 1982]

Staff (Not Credited)

Director Ted Kotcheff has all sorts of trouble with this mess, aside from credibility. Supposedly, the real villain here is society itself, which invented a debacle like Vietnam and must now deal with its lingering tragedies. But First Blood cops out completely on that one, not even trying to find a solution to Stallone's problems. Read full review

Bill Cosford

First Blood is no more than a man-bites-town retread, in which Vietnam and its aftermath are merely the angle. [27 Oct 1982, p.B6]