A Reel Review - RAMBO: LAST BLOOD

In 1982, Sylvester Stallone brought to the big-screen the character of John Rambo; a traumatized Vietnam veteran who is also the finest killing machine ever put together by the military. Rambo’s adventures and mishaps took him through small-town USA, back to ‘Nam, and then Afghanistan and Burma…with his final film offering a satisfying closure for the war-torn character. But nothing can ever rest in today’s Hollywood, and nearly forty years after Rambo first hit the screens, he returns again in LAST BLOOD. 

Eleven years after returning home, Rambo (Stallone), battles a Mexican cartel who has kidnapped his niece Gabrielle (Yvette Monreal). 

When last we saw Rambo, he was returning home after decades of fighting one war or another. It was an emotional wrap for the character and seemingly the series, and the job of Stallone and director (yo) Adrian Grunberg for another film was to make his return worthwhile. The early goings of the film are fascinating as we catch up with domestic Rambo. He has inherited his father’s Arizona horse ranch, and is quietly raising horses and taking care of his niece. But at the same time, he is preparing for a war that he feels is coming; digging endless tunnels under his property, and stocking up and creating his own weapons. When Gabrielle gets kidnapped, Rambo uses every skill he has to get her back and to eventually defend his home when the cartel comes knocking. 

For the first time, Rambo has something to fight for that his near and dear to his heart. But either through lazy scriptwriting or a disaster in the editing room, LAST BLOOD falls apart in the telling. The early goings have Rambo experiencing PTSD with flashbacks to Vietnam…only to have that element vanish from the film and never come back. His blood-line relationship to Gabrielle is unclear, Gabrielle’s kidnapping oddly happens off-camera and is clumsily handled, the medications he’s taking are given no context, a free-lance reporter shows up to help out and then disappears, and the closing monologue at the end feels like it belongs in another movie. Chunks of the film feel like they’re missing; it’s bizarre, sloppy, and feels incomplete. 

If it’s blood and gore that is expected out of a RAMBO film, then LAST BLOOD does deliver. Rambo is as ruthless as ever, using his home-made weapons to impale and blast bodies all over the place…and when he’s not doing that, he’s tearing body parts away with his bare hands. It’s a bloodbath, and moderately fun…but the problem is what he’s fighting for changes by the end of the second act, and suddenly he’s not fighting for very much at all. LAST BLOOD does have its stand-up-and-cheer moments, but they’re forgotten just as quick as they happen. The main villain is one-dimensional, his army faceless, and the final battle feels oddly feels stretched in a movie that’s only 89 minutes long. 

Stallone turns in a good performance in his fifth outing as John Rambo, playing the internally-troubled vet as well as he ever has. It’s a movie of long speeches and monologue for Rambo, which feels oddly out of place for the character that we’re used to seeing give one-word answers. His introversion is gone, and that creates a disconnect from what we’re used to. Yvette Monreal is outstanding, and plays the fear of being kidnapped into sex-slavery perfectly. 

Rambo has always been a character of contradictions; he’s a walking example of how war can destroy a man, and yet provide skills that makes him a hero. Maybe that’s what has made him so popular over the years, but in LAST BLOOD the division is a bother. Rambo this time out has little to do but draw blood, and his conclusion (if we can call it that), is very unsatisfying and un-necessary. There are hints of something larger and more introspective, but they never happen. There was no need for this at all. 

BOTTOM LINE: Fuck it