Let’s try to keep this one short and sweet, shall we? Rambo: Last Blood is not a good movie. Although that’s nothing new with this series. The series’ first, First Blood, is the only good Rambo movie. It was an action movie with something to say, telling the (surprisingly) poignant story of a soldier’s struggle reacclimating to civilian life. The rest are terrible at worst, aggressively average at best.
Last Blood is miles away from the series’ humble beginnings. It picks up with John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) living the simple life on his deceased father’s horse ranch in Arizona. Living with him are teenager Gabrielle (Yvette Monreal) and her grandmother Maria (Adriana Barraza). This relationship is never fully explained. Gabrielle calls Rambo “Uncle John” but it seems that neither her mother (deceased) nor father (abandoned the family) was Rambo’s sibling. We’re simply left to assume that Rambo was friends with one of the parents or Maria.
Unbeknownst to both John and Maria, Gabrielle had been in contact with an old friend, Jezel (Fenessa Pineda), who now lives in Mexico. Gabrielle asked her for help in tracking down her father. Jezel tells Gabrielle she located her father. Gabrielle wants to go to Mexico to see him. She wants an answer as to why he left. John and Maria are both vehemently against her making this trip.
But Gabrielle doesn’t listen and goes anyway. The meeting with her father goes terribly, so Jezel takes her out to a night club to try to lift her spirits. Gabrielle is drugged and kidnapped by a member of a Mexican cartel that runs a sex trafficking operation. When John learns of Gabrielle’s disappearance, he goes to Mexico in a rescue attempt, and to exact revenge on the cartel.
Nothing happens, then everything happens
Last Blood crams almost all of its action into the last 20 minutes or so. Up until that point, there’s honestly not a lot that happens. Nothing interesting, anyway. No action, no character development, no B plot. Then the third act arrives. Everything Last Blood had been holding back explodes off the screen, literally and figuratively.
It’s an overload of guns and explosions and bad guys being stabbed or impaled with various pointy weapons. It’s too much and too graphic. And because it all happens so fast and close together, that sentiment is amplified. If it could have been spread out a bit more, this amount of violence might have felt a little more acceptable. But instead it comes off as a murderous Home Alone spoof (complete with drawings).
Missed opportunities
There’s no debating the fact that Last Blood tells the simplest version of this story. But there were chances to introduce more depth and substance to the plot and characters. And with its short runtime, it would have been possible to address these.
The most obvious example of this is the relationships John has with Maria and Gabrielle. It’s obvious that he cares for them as he would his own family. But we don’t know why. We don’t know what the connection is. Taking the time to add in even the tiniest amount of explanation gives the audience a reason to care.
Then there’s the cartel. While in Mexico, Rambo meets Carmen (Paz Vega), an independent journalist investigating the cartel. We learn very little about either. Carmen has her own personal history with the cartel, which is her reason for helping Rambo. But she is dropped from the story almost as quickly as she is introduced.
As for the cartel itself, Last Blood takes time to set them up as horrible people. But we already know that simply by the fact that it’s a cartel. Show some more of the inner workings of it. Or set up some of the cartel members as real characters, rather than just “Bad Guy 1,” “Bad Guy 2,” and so on. As underdeveloped as every other character is, that’s taken to the extreme with the movie’s villains.
One to skip
Rambo: Last Blood might be just the ticket for fans who want a quick action movie with outrageous set pieces. But if you crave anything more than that, Last Blood is going to disappoint. With unnecessary levels of violence, no character development, and no real reason to care about any of the characters, you can safely remove Rambo: Last Blood from your watchlist.
The Verdict: 2.5/10