The end credits of Rambo: Last Blood have scenes of the old Rambo films flashing on screen, reminding the audience why the character of Vietnam vet John Rambo, played by a young, handsome, muscled Sylvester Stallone, who also co-wrote Rambo: First Blood, became such a movie icon. Sure the character and the film franchise was xenophobic and excessively violent, but the action was slick and the causes he fought for somewhat worthy of battle.
To Adrian Grunberg goes the unenviable task of bidding the character goodbye, so that he can find other characters to play — not that constant revisits to the Rocky and The Expendable franchises have Stallone do anything unexpected.
In this fiilm, John Rambo — a visibly ageing Stallone, mumbling his lines — lives on ranch, where he has raised his adoptive niece Gabrielle (Yvette Monreal). Below the ranch is a warren of tunnels that Rambo has dug himself, and equipped with an arsenal of deadly weaponry, because he has time on his hands, and is “crazy.” Of course, as any viewer knows, if there are tunnels, they will be used in action sequences.
The bucolic ideal cannot last — what is John Rambo without ‘foreign’ baddies to annihilate? This time, the villains are a Mexican drugs and human trafficking cartel. Gabrielle disobeys Rambo and her grandmother Maria (Adriana Barraza), to cross the border to meet her rotten father, and walks bang into the flesh trade web. All hell is bound to break loose when anyone lays a finger on Rambo’s loved one.
The Martinez Brothers, Victor (Óscar Jaenada) and Hugo (Sergio Peris-Mencheta), are really vile and vicious as he soon discovers when he enters their lair unprepared. It is the timely help of “independent journalist” (Paz Vega) that saves his skin. Poor Gabrielle suffers a worse fate.
Rambo pops mysterious pills (for his mind? heart?), but still has it in him to kill a Mexican vermin with his bare hands. This brings the furious Senor Martinez to Rambo’s ranch with a small army. Predictably, the film turns into a geriatric and very brutal version of Home Alone, what with deadly booby traps laid all over the place and in those tunnels.
Stallone, who is no longer a pretty sight, and looks worse after the gangsters cut him up, should really know when it is time for Rambo’s final hurrah. Hopefully, that rocking chair is placed on his porch for a purpose.
