Holy schnitzel they're still making these movies?! So now we have 'Last Blood', a continuation from 'First Blood'. K I see what they did there...ugh! Am I to presume this is the final movie in this long-drawn-out milked franchise? Probably not.
So John Rambo is essentially retired from killing people and is now living a peaceful life on his Arizona ranch. He lives there with help from an old friend and her granddaughter Gabriel. So everything is dandy until Gabriel discovers the location of her biological father somewhere in Mexico through her friend (also in Mexico). Despite warnings from her Gran and Rambo she runs off anyway to find him. Low and behold she gets herself kidnapped by some stereotypical bad guys and Rambo must save the day.
The problem with this movie is it doesn't feel like the right kind of send-off for the franchise, if it's meant to be that? The plot is incredibly trashy and felt more like an old throw-away, top shelf, lower-level sequel. This felt more like the type of sequel that would result from franchise fatigue further resulting in the franchise getting axed. In no way did this feel like a grand send-off for a legendary cinematic hero like John Rambo.
Everything moves very quickly in this movie with little time for you to care about anything. Before we know it Gabriel is off ignoring advice and getting kidnapped. Rambo is then off to rescue her, gets beaten, heals up, and he's back again to amp things up. Then before we know it the bad guys have driven all the way from Mexico to Arizona to kill Rambo. Apparently the border didn't stop multiple cars with lots of armed men in tactical gear? Am I to presume the border guards were crooked? Or maybe they didn't go through an armed border section? Also I get that Rambo is a tough guy but why didn't he call the police?
Rambo's ranch has lots of self-made tunnels underneath which obviously come into play for the big finale. The whole thing is so painfully predictable and cliche really. Like Rambo has to have all these tunnels just so he can do his homemade booby trap thing à la his Nam days. And they are really big and extensive too! But yeah this is all an excuse to have lots of nasty gruesome booby trap deaths and so Rambo can use a multitude of weapons. It's also amusing how the number of bad guys seems to grow in the finale as Rambo kills them. At first there seemed to be around twenty bad guys but it seems never-ending as Rambo kills them in various ways. At least it seemed that way, could be wrong.
The cliches really quite numerous throughout. The area of Mexico Gabriel goes to is typically rundown with armed thugs hanging around on street corners. The first time Rambo approaches the bad guys main HQ he is spotted and dealt with quickly. The second time when he comes back for revenge he infiltrates the place with no problems. Where did everybody go? The female journalist character that helps Rambo after he gets beaten goes nowhere. She's just there to help him in that moment. When Gabriel dies Rambo apparently doesn't inform the authorities and just buries her in the backyard. And the bad guys treat the girls so badly that I wouldn't really have thought anyone would want to go with them in the state they are in. Just seemed counterproductive and needlessly brutal for the sake of it. Surely you'd want the girls to be attractive? Not beaten to a pulp.
Addressing the over-the-top violence and xenophobia accusations. Is it violent? Yes. Is it overly violent? I didn't think so. I've seen much worse and frankly I think the previous Rambo movie was far more violent than this. What's more much of the violence was set in the dark and at times felt more akin to a horror flick. As for xenophobia, don't be silly people. It's just a stupid cheesy action flick with stereotypes. We see this all the time, I don't get the issue.
This movie felt cheap and tacky to me, but not in a good way. Some horror flicks feel (or are) cheap and tacky but in a fun way which can lead to them becoming cults. This just felt dark, dingy, depressing, and cheap. Stallone is clearly too old for this which made things even more stupid. He looks grizzled and cool sure but clearly too old. The movie also hangs on people knowing Rambo's history from previous movies, so any young folk who haven't seen the older Rambo flicks could be confused about certain things (the tunnels for instance). But the worse thing about this is it could have been any character as the protagonist. This doesn't really feel like a Rambo movie, it could have been anyone. Stick in Denzel Washington or Liam Neeson and there you go, another 'Taken' or 'Equalizer', the plot fits those characters better. The previous movie was far better than this and it should have ended there.
4/10
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