Mark Reviews Movies: RAMBO: LAST BLOOD

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 20, 2019

The existence of Rambo: Last Blood might come as a surprise to some. That's partly because the movie seems unnecessary, considering that it arrives over a decade after 2008's Rambo, which itself seemed like a surprising swansong for the eponymous character—arriving 20 years after the previous entry in the series.

Then again, the continuation of the story of Sylvester Stallone's second-most iconic screen character past First Blood was a surprise. In the original novel, Rambo, the traumatized Vietnam veteran who suffers a nervous breakdown, died at the end. Even in the film adaptation, which is still the best of the series, his survival seemed out of place under the circumstances. Every movie following that first one simply transformed John Rambo into a generic action hero, although the 2008 one did at least try to return the character to one who actually experienced some terrible things and still contends with the psychological wounds.

Could there be yet another story about Rambo, as he continues to try to find peace in a world that has constantly proven to be against him? There could be, of course, and there's even a glimmer of an idea as to how the character's unending search for solace might continue and, once again, be undone by the horrors of the world. It's only an idea, though.

There are plenty of ideas within Matthew Cirulnick and Stallone's screenplay for the fifth installment of this franchise. Some of them are promising. A lot of them aren't. They all share one quality: They're just ideas. This feels like the first draft of a story, rushed to the screen before Stallone realized he couldn't play the role anymore and/or audiences stopped caring about another Rambo adventure.

It's one thing for us to be surprised by the sudden appearance of a movie sequel after such a long hiatus. It's another thing entirely when a movie makes it seem as if its entire existence came as an unexpected surprise to the filmmakers. They certainly made a movie. They just don't seem to have put much time or effort into it.

The glimmer of a decent idea is that Rambo now lives a tranquil life on a ranch in Arizona. He also has a family of sorts now, consisting of his niece Gabrielle (Yvette Monreal), whom Rambo has raised since the death of his sister (It's always nice to learn of the existence of a seemingly important character in a movie series after his or her death), and Maria (Adriana Barraza), who's either the ranch's owner or another relative (because, again, all of this is just an idea).

Rambo seems content, but beneath the ranch, he spent the last decade constructing an elaborate tunnel system, which is his way of coping with the continued trauma of his time in combat. It's a good metaphor. For the filmmakers, though, it's better as the location for the climactic standoff between Rambo and bunch of nameless, faceless (literally, after encountering some of the hero's booby traps) bad guys.

To make a short story even shorter, Gabrielle goes to Mexico to meet with her absentee father and is kidnapped by a gang of sex traffickers. Rambo follows his niece's trail to rescue her, is beaten by the gang, and recovers with the help of a local journalist (played by Paz Vega). None of this actually matters, except as an excuse to get Rambo back to killing a bunch of people.

The niece is out of the picture almost as soon as she returns. Nothing that happens in Mexico—the deadbeat father, a betraying friend, the grieving journalist, the sex trafficking of numerous teenage girls—matters, either. At other points in his life, Rambo has shown that he would care about such people in such peril. At this point in the movie series, though, the only thing the filmmakers care about is rushing through the plot as quickly as possible to get to the bloodshed.

To be clear, Rambo hasn't grown cynical. Indeed, he actually seems to have a stronger resolve to protect others, because he knows what pain and loss mean. This movie simply, cynically decides that the character, the trauma, and the injustice on full display don't matter—especially when Rambo's playground of deadly traps and weapons are waiting back at the ranch.

That lengthy action sequence (The movie's only one, which would be impressive if anything that came before it were fleshed out in any significant way) delivers plenty of blood and gore. That's all it can do, though, because Rambo: Last Blood is only a string of broad ideas, leading inevitably toward violence and not caring if the story earns any of it.

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