Rambo: Last Blood is the fifth and final film in the Rambo franchise and once more sees John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) living on his ranch in America and helping raise a young Mexican girl who heads home when she learns of her real father, when she disappears on that trip Rambo gets angry and goes looking for her but will never draw First Blood he’ll only fight back.
I was very excited for Rambo: Last Blood mainly because of the films trailers which looked very promising and my love of 1982’s First Blood and 1985’s Rambo: First Blood Part 2 which are iconic slices of 80s Americana to this day but 1988’s Rambo 3 was pathetic and silly and 2008’s Rambo was okay could Last Blood be a fitting finale or more proof that Rambo should’ve walked off into the Sunset long ago.
Well Rambo: Last Blood is not a bad movie not at all, Sly is as reliable a screen presence as he’s ever been and at 73 he proves in this movie that he can still carry a film when he tries to and doesn’t phone it in like he has done in some of his past films, the violence in the film more than justifies the R18+ rating the film has here in Australia and sadly its uneven when it works it works very well but when it doesn’t it feels like its right out of the most recent Mortal Kombat games in terms of its visual look.
Plus there is a great opening scene of Rambo rescuing some Hikers trapped in Floodwaters that feels right out of the first 2 films and when it was over I thought It’s A Long Road by Dan Hill which was the song that played over the end credits of First Blood.
Sadly however much like the 2008 Rambo which was also R18+ violent this new movie doesn’t have a good story, sure he goes to Mexico but it doesn’t play out in an interesting way and it feels more like Millennium Studios which was born out of the Cannon group from the 1980s had a script for a Taken like action film sitting in a draw and Sly came to them wanting to make a final Rambo film and they dusted off that script and just shot that and it really feels not only old hat but the chief villains are cartoonish in a bad way.
But maybe this was inevitable given how much Rambo 1 and 2 represented America in the 1980s and their response to the Vietnam War starting off with the sombre reality of that conflict and those who came home being shunned from society and living day to day, moving from place to place and taking what odd jobs they can to survive in First Blood and then the Reagan era fantasy of “We’re Gonna Win This Time” that permeates through Rambo 2 it really made those movies and this character feel iconic and to have a story that feels like its 5-10 years old be the end isn’t good enough and this has happened time and again with franchises and brands we come to love and I wish it would stop.
So that was Rambo: Last Blood and its not awful not at all but given the meaning of Rambo 1 and 2 this movie just isn’t good enough and fans deserved far better, 2 out of 5.
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