Rambo: Last Blood: Film Review

Rambo: Last Blood: Film Review

Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Paz Vega, Yvette Montreal
Director: Adrian Grunberg

Appallingly xenophobic and grubby, Rambo: Last Blood is an action film that doesn't need - or deserve - to exist.

Stallone lumbers on as John Rambo, 10 years after he was last seen, a Vietnam vet who doesn't want to kill and who now lives on a horse ranch in Arizona. Looking after his daughter's daughter Gabriella, Rambo is thrust into a quest for revenge when Gabriella goes to Mexico, is kidnapped by a cartel and traded as a sex slave.

And all when she's about to leave for a bright prosperous future in college...

Needless to say revenge follows.

Rambo: Last Blood paints a dangerous picture of Mexico in these current climes.

It villainises everyone who's seen south of the border thanks to one note characterisation and stereotyping to the max. Everyone is a horrendous caricature, aimed at fuelling the fire that is the tension between America and Mexico that has been exacerbated by the current US President Donald Trump. Rapists, criminals, corrupt police - they're all here for the potential political rallies, and there's even a scene of the wire wall between the two countries being ridden rough shod over.

The majority of the problem of Rambo: Last Blood is the lack of characterisation around Rambo - the film exists solely to deal out various forms of despatching the bad guys in the final act. And while the tunnel-set finale works reasonably brutally and well, there's little to no joy seeing the bad guys go down as they are so one-note and exist only to be killed off.

Stallone exudes something earlier on as a calm and peaceful Rambo, who is rocked by PTSD and haunted by those he couldn't save. But as the odds stack up, thanks to a rote sense of direction Adrian Grunberg brings to the table, there's little sense of Stallone's Rambo overcoming the odds, more that it will happen and that's it. Even the two women who star in the film (Vega and Montreal) are given little to do except be victims - neither get chance to exact their revenge; only the men can do it.

Lacking hardly any redeeming features, Rambo: Last Blood is a film nobody wanted to see for this four decade old hero. A final montage of cuts from Rambo films from the decades prior only serves to show what a mess the film has made of the legacy and why some things should be left alone.