Rambo: Last Blood

An old episode of The Angry Video Game Nerd (possibly still going by The Angry Nintendo Nerd, it’s hard to remember) made a joke that the then-upcoming new Rambo movie would be called something lame like John Rambo, much like the lazily-titled Rocky Balboa that had recently come out. Funny thing, he was proven right, until the studio turned tail and retitled the thing just plain ol’ Rambo. I remember watching that movie in college and thinking it was, by far, the worst of the franchise. It was too dark (literally), the bloodshed was gratuitous, and there was a sense of the franchise zombifying before our eyes. Sure, it was moving, but there was no true life, no soul left in the shambling body, a mere shade of its enormously entertaining predecessors. We thought it was over. We were wrong.

Rambo: Last Blood comes at a strange point in Sylvester Stallone’s career: Though well into his seventies, he can still move a bit, yet his roles have oscillated between the emotionally touching Creed films and sad garbage like the later Expendables entries and the already zombifying Escape Plan franchise. On the former hand, he’s aging out a well-loved and -worn character, allowing his twilight years to inform and propel the succeeding generation; on the latter, he looks as though he’s trying real hard to show that he is, in fact, still virile, still a force to be reckoned with, but mostly failing at it, if for no other reason than the films are pretty bad.

What we have here is another entry in that last category, combined with the excruciatingly unnecessary re-exhumation of a beloved character, the star (and the studio, no doubt) unwilling to just let old dogs die. The plot finds our man John Rambo living out his autumn years near the Mexican border, serving as a surrogate husband/father to a Mexican-American family on a farm. The teenage daughter, burning to confront her birth father for answers as to why he left her those years ago, heads across the border to find him. As you might expect in a film like this, she falls victim to a local gang, who presses her into sex slavery. When Rambo finds out, he follows her trail down there, leading to a rough-up and some bad times for his quasi-niece. Shit goes down from there, naturally.

I think what bothers me the most about this entry in the series is just how much of a wasted opportunity it wound up being. First off, it feels like your standard fighting-the-gangs flick, a dime a dozen in the VOD world these days, just with the Rambo brand name slathered on it at the last minute, not unlike the latter Hellraiser offerings. I mean, it’s shot as blandly and standardly as possible, flat lighting, garbage digital zooms at various points (never calling for it, mind you), digital blood effects, and a lackluster plot. We’ve all seen this movie quite a few times by now, and the addition of Stallone, as Rambo or not, does nothing to elevate the material, especially as he’s often too difficult to understand (yeah, I know, that’s been a joke that’s dogged him his whole career, but he’s pretty damn unintelligible here, kids, believe you me). There’s a distinct lack of anything interesting happening until the final ten-or-so minutes, when things are wrapped up very neatly, very quickly, and very easily, and there’s just a mountain of contrivance: This supposedly badass gang doesn’t try for vengeance after one of their flophouses is tossed, then when they’re finally stirred to action against the aging Rambo, they’ve already given him plenty of time to prep, train, and heal. Oh, wait, that healing he does appears to be a massive continuity error: the wounds on his cheek and forehead disappearing for his second jaunt into Mexico and reappearing in slightly healed form when he returns to finish his preparations. And it’s oh-so-convenient that Rambo’s been crazy enough to carve out a series of tunnels beneath the farm where he’s lived and somehow kept up an armory (in spite of the whole nearly-destroying-an-entire-Oregon-town thing and whatnot), and the filmmakers make an overt point to underline this fact in the first act, adhering to Chekhov’s rule so closely that he’s smelling the kvass that late playwright pissed out decades ago.

Speaking of, that’s the other major failing of the film: Despite referencing the title in its own, there’s no connection to the Rambo we met in First Blood and the Rambo we’re seeing here, nor has there really been since the franchise decided to ditch its progenitor’s name. This is no war-ravaged veteran snapping because of the unnecessary pricks of the world, this is the Rambo that fucks everything and everyone up ‘cause he believes it’s right to do so. Screw proper channels, they’re ineffectual, just bust down doors, pop some caps, and stroll off into the sunset. Basically, this is every Stallone tough guy role, from Cobretti to Dredd and beyond. There was ample opportunity to explore the battered brain of John Rambo, to show how time has weathered him and forced him to contemplate his place in a world that’s changed so drastically around him, to question the ethos of the previous trio of entries, and none of this happens. There are a couple brief points where Rambo mumbles something about being fed up all of the bloodshed he’s seen, all of the evil that’s still out there, but he’s not really tired, he’s more than happy to continue the slaughter. He even out-and-out admits that he’s only our for vengeance here that he wants his enemies to know the hate and pain that’s coming their way, and any mental issues that could have been there are swept under the rug and ignored in favor of a generic, worthless action flick with nothing to say and I doubt even the ability to say anything if it wanted to. The old age discussed at the beginning has taken exactly no toll on our hero, as he’s still able to kick some ass with the best of them, and he’s more than willing to do so without hesitation and with plenty of malice of forethought. What could have been a thoughtful and meaningful fading of the character, a la Creed, turns into the opposite, not unlike Rocky Balboa, oddly enough.

Because of this failing, I can’t rightly say that Last Blood is worth your time, even if it’s fairly short. As mildly satisfying as the finale can be, there’s too much nothing to get through (wait, we’re getting two prepping montages in the span of a few minutes?), and nothing that made Rambo unique comes into play, aside from broadly recreating his first on-screen appearance. This thing is a bore and a disappointment, plain and simple.