RAMBO LAST BLOOD: An Occasionally Effective, But Ultimately Middling Swansong to Cinema's Iconic Action Hero

Genre: Action

Produced by: Avi Lerner, Les Weldon, Kevin King Templeton, Yariv Lerner

Directed by: Adrian Grunberg   

Written by: Matthew Cirulnick, Sylvester Stallone  

Production Company: Lionsgate 

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Paz Vega, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Adriana Barraza, Yvette Monreal, Oscar Jaenada, Rick Zingale 

Runtime: 99 minutes                     

 

SYNOPSIS: 

 

After spending many years globetrotting, Vietnam War veteran John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) has finally made his way back home to America. He has settled into a peaceful life in the countryside while also befriending a single mother Maria (Adriana Barraza) and her teenage daughter Gabrielle (Yvette Monreal) in the process. But he’s then forced back into action when he found out that Gabrielle was kidnapped by the Mexican cartel. Once again, even perhaps for the last time, he must rely on his military skills and travel across the border in order to save her. 

REVIEW: 

In a long film career that has spanned across decades, not many of his roles have defined Sylvester Stallone quite like the Rambo movies. Stallone’s turn as the Italian American boxer Rocky Balboa, another signature character of his, in Rocky (1976) might have made him a star, but it was his turn as the highly trained ex-soldier John Rambo in First Blood (1982) that transformed him into a bona fide action star. Such title represents a gift and curse for Stallone as he dominated the 1980’s cinematic landscape, while also being stuck playing the same Rambo-like role over and over again. 

Through no fault of his own though, First Blood was a game changer in the action genre. It was the movie that helped popularize the lone wolf action hero trope, which has been used in numerous other action movies. In fact, there’s a period in Hollywood where every action movie a filmmaker and an action star made was nothing but retreads of the Rambo formula. And even Stallone was involved in a fair share of them (remember Cobra (1986)?). Regardless of that, nobody does the formula better than its originator. Not even the sequels within the Rambo franchise could reach the heights of the first movie. 

That does not mean that he’s going to hang up his boots quite just yet. Considering how the Rocky brand enjoyed a late resurgence of sort with the Creed spin-off movies (2015-2018), there’s certainly a part of him that feels like there’s still some unfinished business left with the Rambo brand. And it took him only eleven years after his previous effort Rambo (2008) to get a fifth installment over the line. Unlike most sequels today, Rambo Last Blood signifies the end of an era than the start of something new. After presumably hanging up his gloves as Rocky in Creed II (2018), Last Blood is supposedly Stallone’s swansong to the titular role. 

It is only fitting that Last Blood marks a reasonable, if not welcome, return to form for the Rambo franchise. Adrian Grunberg’s movie --  from a screenplay by Mr. Stallone himself and Matthew Cirulnick -- comes the closest at conveying a sequel which recaptures the sort of complexity and depth in the titular character that was prevalent in First Blood but absent in the next three sequels. It is almost like seeing the 1982 original faithfully reimagined for the 2019 cultural and political landscape.

Much of Last Blood plays out almost like a somber, meditative character study, as if to remind filmgoers and die-hard Rambo fans alike of a time when John Rambo was more than just another Hollywood action pinup. Stallone and Cirulnick handle most of the lead hero’s inner turmoil with just enough heart to tug at the heartstrings, especially in a first act that delicately delves pretty deep into Rambo’s PTSD and fear of growing old. Grunberg’s direction during the dramatic scenes is just as effective, keeping the proceedings grounded in such an in-the-moment way that it packs an even bigger emotional punch. 

 

Last Blood is about as far removed from the over-the-top, testosterone-fuelled silliness of 80’s action movies as an action movie about an 80’s American action hero can be. By replacing the franchise’s typical war-stricken wilderness with the tranquil countryside, this Rambo sequel is a real, slow-burn action movie that is firmly rooted in the tradition of the good old Western, which is a much-needed, refreshing change of pace. Grunberg makes the most of the dusty countryside aesthetics at his disposal as he often lets many shots linger in a style that’s uncommon in today’s more frenetic action movies but more common in Sergio Leone’s Westerns. There are also quite a lot of glorious Western-style wide angle shots here that should get its audience sucked into the grittiness and grime of its modern-day wild west. If the visuals aren’t a fine enough indication, the folks in the costume department more than match the cinematographer Brendan Galvin’s effort at evoking the genre’s mood, bravely discarding the hero’s trademark bandana in favor of a cowboy hat straight from a Clint Eastwood production. 

And it doesn’t take a while for Last Blood to portray Rambo as the modern-day reincarnation of the Eastwood-type lone cowboy, with him, in a poncho and cowboy hat, walking across the frame on horseback like he’s some sort of a mythic presence. The way the camera slowly reveals his transformation further accentuates such notion. Soon after, Rambo is thrown into one heck of an opening action sequence, where he finds himself back in the familiar territory of the jungle. Only this time around, he has to rescue a bunch of people from heavy flood than foreign terrorist. Rarely has Rambo been associated with disaster flick, but credit to Grunberg, the whole sequence is a well-executed blend of First Blood-style Rambo action and disaster set-piece, with him managing to not only wring visceral thrills, but also some dramatic tension. It brilliantly captures Rambo as a character, a noble yet tortured soul who cannot deal with the idea of failing to save a life, giving every cathartic and elegiac moment (particularly a shot of a body bag in an ambulance) a great deal of weight.  

Regardless of its dour tone, Last Blood still mostly delivers the goods as a pure fun popcorn action flick. It’s got all of the necessary ingredients for a Rambo blockbuster set-piece to work, with another gore fest consisting of big fights, big guns and big explosions. Whether it’s Stallone himself, Ted Kotcheff or Adrian Grunberg, every Rambo director seems to always find fresh, inventive, even outrageous ways for the hero to dispatch the bad guys. Last Blood’s third act ticks all of those boxes, in which Rambo takes on the Mexican cartels by booby-trapping his home with various kinds of dangerous Rube Goldberg-type contraptions in a manner similar to Home Alone (1990). In a sense, this is the closest anyone can get to an R-rated Home Alone movie, and even if it’s not canon in the Home Alone franchise, this is easily the best non-Macaulay Culkin Home Alone sequel ever made. Make no mistake, this entire sequence is action movie violence at its silliest and most cartoonish, but Grunberg’s fast-paced direction injects such ridiculousness with the sort of adrenaline rush that makes watching Rambo tap into his inner Kevin McAllister an exciting experience. 

But such kind of action is so few and far between throughout that it becomes impossible for Last Blood to sustain some momentum. The movie’s midsection drags because of its overabundance of supporting characters and their subplots. There’s even a long stretch where Rambo either appears only intermittently in the narrative or just disappears without any explanation. Unfortunately, none of the non-Rambo stuff holds a candle compared to its titular character’s tried-and-tested story. In fact, the movie gets boring whenever Rambo is not involved. The extra material has little to no impact on Rambo’s character and instead, hinders Last Blood from realizing its full potential. 

What’s worse, almost every character outside Rambo resembles more of a walking cliché than fully realized characters, especially the character of Rambo’s niece Gabrielle. She’s the supporting character with more screen time and emotional importance in Rambo’s current personal life, yet she doesn’t leave the sort of impression that suggests the aforementioned. Stallone and Cirulnick’s script does a poor job at giving a compelling reason to care for Gabrielle, spending only one half of the movie at supplying her some form of characterization while doing nothing for the rest of it other than make her a pawn shifted around for plot conveniences. 

At the same time, the writing for her character is routine. It’s simply the writers running through a laundry list of action movie daughter clichés without having anything new to contribute to the formula. Not even her playful banter with Rambo can overcome the recycled dialogue, making it harder to be invested with Rambo’s plight to save a niece he has considered to be his daughter. 

If Gabrielle is already an uninteresting character during those little moments in the first place, imagine having a second act where she becomes the movie’s quasi-main character. The script takes her on that same, well-trodden road trip through Mexico to find her long lost biological father Don Miguel (Rick Zingale), which serves only as the filmmakers’ excuse to concoct quite possibly the most convoluted, unconvincing way to get to the main kidnapping plot. Furthermore, the subplot does nothing to develop her character. If anything, the whole second act is a series of plain time-wasting fillers. All the Mexico subplot involving Gabrielle’s father eventually leads nowhere, introduced only halfway through the movie and wrapped up in such a swift, unsatisfying fashion that make one go, “what’s the point?” Considering how unpleasant this father character is in the thankfully little screentime he had, this shouldn’t be a big problem. 

The idea of reducing her character into just another face in a long list of damsel-in-distresses certainly is. It’s 2019 and it’s a shame that Last Blood falls into the all-too-common trap every manly, disposable 80’s (or even 80’s-inspired) action movie fall into, where the female characters have to be weak and helpless in order to not only to make her seem “compelling”, but, most importantly, also make the action hero look good. And the script doesn’t even afford her a chance to retaliate, as she spends the majority of the movie being a wet, wounded blanket waiting for the hero to save her. 

Having said that, Gabrielle would not have been in that situation had she been a little bit smarter. Last Blood misses the point of what makes movies about kidnapping work: the sense that it’s something unavoidable. In this case, the situation is far more avoidable than other kidnapping movies of its kind. There are about two scenes in Last Blood where any real-life, smart person would make the obvious, usually right choice, the type that would have ended the movie quickly. But since this is a feature-length movie and not a short one, she has to make the not-so-obvious, wrong decisions for the sake of the plot. Her character truly gives the word “dumb” a new name in a way that makes all slasher movie dumb blondes seem as smart as Albert Einstein. 

Speaking of the plot, Last Blood’s storytelling is of the by-the-numbers kind. It would feel more at home alongside the Rambo imitators than the Rambo franchise itself. Stallone and Cirulnick’s screenplay shamelessly copies elements, themes and plot points from Taken (2008), Sicario (2015), John Wick (2014) and really, just about every action movie that’s been released throughout the 21^st century, while forgetting being a Rambo movie in the process. As an action movie, Last Blood is a Rambo movie in name only as the screenplay makes every attempt at turning the old man version of cinema’s original action hero into the quiet everyman-turned-lethal assassin copycat of Liam Neeson’s Brian Mills from the Taken movies. Having the idea that a sequel of a classic action movie franchise would rather rip off than inspire shows just how far the Rambo franchise has fallen. 

But that’s nothing compared to the surface-level, tasteless manner in which Last Blood approaches social commentary. The movie attempts to bring to light serious, meaningful issues such as sex trafficking, but has nothing serious or meaningful to say about them other than as means of shock value. It’s a Saw/Hostel-esque torture porn depiction of sex trafficking where nearly every female character serve merely as punching bags for the abusive men. The effect is obviously appalling, even by the standards of those accustomed to violent entertainment. 

And the fact that these violent actions are instigated by a bunch of villainous characters that no one can ever take seriously is even more appalling. Five movies in, and the franchise has yet to find a villain as memorable and menacing as Brian Dennehy’s slimy, stubborn local sheriff Will Teasle in First Blood. Instead, Last Blood continues its streak of Looney Tunes villains with a pair of cartel/trafficker brothers Hugo (Sergio Peris-Mencheta) and Victor Martinez (Oscar Jaenada) an unwelcome addition to that list. And the writing for these villains is soap opera level. The Martinez brothers are less of characters as they are more of a broad archetype. They are just a pair of moustache-twirling baddies and that’s pretty much it. If there’s anything more to their characterization, well, they’re a pair of incompetent moustache-twirling baddies, so incompetent that something as implausible as a73-year old Rambo taking out these cartel’s men so easily without breaking a single sweat makes sense in this universe. 

Not even the franchise’s historically diverse cast can elevate such a so-so material. With only the one obvious exception, the acting all across the board in Rambo Last Blood varies from the subpar to the awful. 

Typical of all the Rambo movies, even the lesser ones, Sylvester Stallone is once again and without a doubt the true bright spot in Last Blood as cinema’s great action icon John Rambo, which is less surprising considering he has been playing the character for nearly four decades. But what sets this Rambo performance apart is how Stallone brings the much-needed dramatic heft back to the franchise. It’s kind of reminiscent to his poignant turn in First Blood, taking a quieter, restrained and eventually effective approach to portraying a haunted, tortured soul of a Vietnam War veteran. All the drama aside, as a lean, mean survivalist/action hero, he is still capable of wielding a shotgun and running a dozen miles, evident in the movie’s insane third act. 

Meanwhile, Yvette Monreal, the young up-and-comer of the Fosters (2013-2018) and Faking It (2012-2013) fame, gives a rather flat and uninspired performance as Rambo’s teenage niece Gabrielle, suggesting that she might not have been ready to make the transition from the small screen to the big screen quite just yet. Monreal lacks the emotional range required to believably portray an angst-ridden teen. Her sarcasm, wit and heartfelt banter with Rambo all just feel artificial and more of the same old same old, rendering her character indistinguishable from every action movie daughter-in-peril archetypes. 

The script sets Gabrielle up as a person Rambo has a close connection with, but what’s onscreen is nowhere near as compelling as his relationship with Adriana Barraza’s single mother character Maria. Barraza provides the better supporting performance as the aforementioned character, whose motherly warmth proves instantly endearing in her many heart-to-heart moments with Rambo. In fact, Last Blood’s action movie plot would have had a stronger dramatic punch if it was the single mother and not the daughter that was kidnapped. 

As far as a bigger name outside Stallone goes, Paz Vega has a thankless part as Carmen Delgado, a freelance reporter investigating the Mexican cartel. She’s given nothing much to do here except tell all the information Rambo and the audience needs about the bad guys (not that it’s necessary). She’s basically a Colonel Trautman-type sidekick character without the late Richard Crenna’s commanding presence and charisma. Even her line reading during those info dump scenes is forgettable if compared to her predecessor. 

At least Vega isn’t as bad as Rambo’s latest villains, a pair of Mexican drug cartels named the Martinez brothers played by Sergio Peris-Mencheta and Oscar Jaenada. Individually and collectively, their performances are amongst the most cartoonish, 1980’s action movie villain-lite interpretation of Mexican drug cartels ever portrayed onscreen. Not only do Peris-Mencheta and Jaenada’s Rambo bad guys chew the scenery in nearly every scene they’re in, but they gobble them all up. Like every 1980’s villains, they cannot help but read virtually their every line out by screaming or make over-the-top gestures. And like every 1980’s villains, they create more unintentionally hilarious moments than menacing ones, which doesn’t quite mesh with the movie’s overall gritty tone. 

CONCLUSION: 

Rambo Last Blood brings an end to Sylvester Stallone’s long run as the legendary action movie icon with a gritty, back-to-basics and occasionally effective sequel that suffers from a lackluster script and a surprising lack of action in its first two acts.

Score: 5.5/10