Rambo: Last Blood (Review)
Rambo: Last Blood Proves Some Action Heroes Need to Retire.
Sylvester Stallone knows how to squeeze every last drop from a film franchise, but Rambo: Last Blood proves that some action heroes need to learn how to retire. Everyone’s favorite PTSD stricken vet is back in his golden years to prove that he’s “still got it,” which is strange because I don’t know who exactly he’s “proving” it too. John Rambo first appeared when Hollywood was on the brink of the era of mindless 80s action movies that were more concerned with things like having big guns, bigger explosions, and the biggest biceps. Rambo: Last Blood honors all of those things, but comes at a time when audiences are no longer impressed with them.
The legendary John Rambo is back, this time trying to escape his past by returning home to live a life of peace training horses in Arizona. For some reason, he suddenly has a niece we’ve never heard of (Yvette Monreal), and he’s become a surrogate father figure for her. In typical B-movie fashion, that means something terrible has to happen to her in order to drive the plot forward and on a trip to Mexico she finds herself kidnapped by sex traffickers. Now, Rambo doesn’t take too kindly to this sort of thing and anyone who has seen his previous films probably knows what that means. Well, I’m here to let you know that exactly what you think is going to happen ends up happening, as the geri-action hero proceeds to show them whippersnappers exactly what he’s capable of. No surprises here.
It’s tough to decide where to start with Rambo: Last Blood because it’s a truly terrible movie. Stallone mumbles his way through his scenes and at a certain point, you have to wonder why they didn’t include subtitles for his character because I honestly had no idea what he was saying half the time. Then there’s the fact that no matter how good of an actor Stallone is, it’s getting to a point where it’s easy to tell he’s getting too old for these kinds of movies. The fact that he can barely turn his head in either direction undermines his legitimacy as an elite soldier that can pick apart cartel goons without breaking a sweat. The smartest thing that Rambo: Last Blood does is hand the character a severe beating in the first half of the movie to help explain why he looks like he’s in constant pain during the climax of the film. Other than that, these old men action flicks are just starting to get sad at this point. Hopefully, Stallone will hang up his Bowie knife after this one.
One of the most annoying things about Rambo: Last Blood is that it feeds on the xenophobia that’s been gripping the country since Donald Trump took office. Rambo’s niece wants to take her first trip down to Mexico to find her long lost father and Rambo, who has been in multiple warzones, proceeds to lecture her about how dangerous it is. Of course, she ends up being kidnapped and turned into a sex slave her first night down there, because that’s apparently what happens to everyone in Mexico. On top of that, half the country seems to work for the villains of the movie and the epic finale involves them illegally crossing the border to hunt down Rambo. It’s the embodiment of all the bullshit that the stupid, terrified masses gobble up every day and I’m really disappointed that Stallone would be fine doing a movie like this. The only saving grace is that the story is told so badly that it’s hard to think anyone would point to it as an example of how scary Mexico is out of fear of admitting that they’ve actually seen it. Then again, director Adrian Grünberg seems to have a thing for making Mexicans the villains in his movies.
This brings me to the plot of the film itself. Rambo: Last Blood is about an hour and a half long, which means in order for it to have plenty of gruesome death scenes, it doesn’t have time to focus on things like character development or the hero’s journey. Most of the exposition explaining the character’s relationships is spoken, which is a huge no-no. If a film has to tell you how important one character is to another rather than show you, it’s probably because it has no idea how. The rest of the characters in the movie serve no other purpose than as a catalyst for Rambo’s rage to resurface. It then rushes the pay-off by having Stallone carve a path of blood through nameless henchmen. Even by 80s b-action movie standards, this is just lazy storytelling. Essentially, Rambo: Last Blood doesn’t give you anything or anyone to really care about and fails to compensate for it by giving us memorable action sequences.
Rambo: Last Blood proves that some franchises need to be sent to a farm upstate. This trend of old men trying to continue to prove their relevance as tough guys is just another form of toxic masculinity plaguing this country. While Rambo: Last Blood does have some pretty intense and gory sequences, they don’t make up for the pathetic story that only serves as a vehicle to make them possible. It tries too hard in all the wrong ways and it’s honestly embarrassing. Rather than waste your time and money on this flick, just watch the old Rambo movies. As bad as they got after the first one, they’re still better than Rambo: Last Blood.
