First Blood (1982), 10/10
I had only seen this movie once ages ago, and I'm not even sure I saw it all the way through back then. So going back to it it turned out to be perhaps the best movie I've seen all year. It's a really brisk watch, but absolutely action packed, expertly paced and full of genuinely engaging subject matter despite all the gunfire and explosions. The movie is as lean and mean as Rambo himself, with the first half being laser focused on him with no subplots or side characters whatsoever. When things start to escalate and broaden in the second half you start to get more of the political and thematic side of the movie. When Rambo enters his kill mode, he's more akin to a robot or a trained animal: he's acting as if programmed. You really get a sense that this man has nothing left, which is driven home when we find out that he'd just found out that the last of his friends had died of cancer when the cops start hassling him.
It feels shockingly relevant to this day, with the power tripping asshole cops making everything worse feeling as timely as ever. It's one of the very rare action movies that not only has a strong, well explored thematic core, but where the action is critical for those themes. Rambo turning into basically a domestic terrorist in the third act feels very purposeful: the machine of unstoppable destruction has turned on its creator, and bringing the chaos with him. The movie's practically screaming "Fuck America!" as Rambo blows up shops, gas stations and police stations. The only person with some understanding of Rambo is the colonel, who's a really interesting character: you feel both a sense of pity but also pride for what Rambo's doing. The colonel's basically watching his favorite pet dog let loose, feeling both accomplishment and sadness for his creation's work. He, and the war machine he represents, are being shown what they truly created: a broken wreck of a man no longer capable of functioning in society, cursed with the burden of his trauma and little else.
The movie looks fantastic. It hasn't aged a day visually, and there's some great cinematography that really drives home the dark loneliness Rambo finds himself in. The stuntwork and effects are fantastic, and in a couple of scenes I genuinely went "wait, how did they do that?" When it goes full "boom kapow" at the end, I honestly couldn't tell if they were blowing up real buildings or just really well-made miniatures.
I could go on but you get the point. This is truly exceptional cinema, and absolutely deserves its place as an all-time classic.