Film Review: Rambo - Last Blood

Sexuality/Nudity Mature
Violence Mature
Vulgarity Mature
Anti-Catholic Philosophy Mature


Movies are primarily visual.  And that is why Rambo: Last Blood commits the biggest sin in the Rambo series:  They cut off John Rambo's mullet!

This may seem like a small thing to you.  And to be sure, even at his age Sylvester Stallone still infuses his dark anti-hero with all the intensity he can muster.  But without at that iconic mullet, Rambo felt like he was just a more violent Rocky Balboa.

The movie itself feels like a made-for-DVD, ultra-violent version of Taken.  John Rambo is living on a farm near the Mexican border.  His last blood relative is his niece Gabrielle (Yvette Monreal), a teenager who is about to graduate high school with her whole future ahead of her.  However, she desperately wants to talk to her deadbeat father who lives across the border.  While there she gets kidnapped by human traffickers, necessitating uncle John to come and exact bloody vengeance.

The first Rambo was a taught action/thriller/satire.  The second two were straight up action extravaganzas.  The fourth tried to make up for Stallone's age with some of the most intense violence I have ever seen in a movie and Last Blood double downs on that.  Stallone and Matthew Cirulnick's screenplay makes sure to establish how utterly inhuman the human traffickers are, so that there is catharsis in their suffering.  This works early on, even when he reaches into someone's chest and cracks their clavicle to torture them.  And the villains continue to pile on more narrative dept so that Rambo's attacks on them continue to be justified.  In culminates in an attack on Rambo's ranch that feels like an installment of Home Alone if it was written by the makers of Saw.  Even though I cheered at each bad guy taken down, I began to feel kind of disgusted as the credits rolled.  As much as all the deaths were earned, all of that bloodshed left a bitter after-taste.  The movie revels in increasingly torturous barbarity towards these evil men.  But there comes a point where when battling with monsters you become a monster.

Stallone is still strong and believable in the role, but this movie doesn't really flow with the kind of style as previous films.  And while simplicity is not necessarily a bad thing in movies (see John Wick), the story feels a bit thin.  We barely get a chance to feel the relationship between John and his niece before the chaos ensues.

And I can guarantee that this movie was not produced with funds from the Mexican Tourism Board.

Rambo: Last Blood, feels like the destructive final act to a series that deserved a better ending.