First Blood is not the "gung-ho" action film its sequels became. Directed by Ted Kotcheff, the film is a melancholic, almost Gothic thriller set against the rainy, claustrophobic forests of Hope, Washington.

Unlike James Bond or John Matrix, John Rambo cries. He breaks down. The famous final monologue— "It wasn't my war! You asked me, I wouldn't say nothing... Back there, I could fly a gunship, I could drive a tank..." —is a raw depiction of PTSD decades before Hollywood understood the term.

Introduction: More Than Just a Movie In the pantheon of action cinema, 1982 stands as a watershed year. While audiences were dazzled by the sci-fi horror of The Thing and the tragic romance of An Officer and a Gentleman , a different kind of thunder rolled in from the Pacific Northwest. That thunder was First Blood .