The first edition of Rambo, released in 1982, based on the novel 'First Blood' by David Morrell, was about an ex-soldier looking for his long-lost fellow war mate. Realising that the friend has succumbed to cancer caused due to exposure to Agent Orange during the war, he walks away. He wanders into a small town, only to be driven out of it by the town's sheriff. He gets arrested and tortured when he insists on coming back into the town. Forced into a corner by insensitive cops, his PTSD gets reignited and he turns into a killing machine.
John Rambo in First Blood was a traumatised Vietnam war veteran. Beneath all his growls and rage, there was an emotionally wounded man who realises that he is an outcast. The movie sought to showcase the damage that war causes not just to the victims, but those who are forced to kill and maim. But it was Rambo's 'biceps, bullets and bandana' that found favour with the audience. The subsequent editions failed to delve into the character, and instead settled for the war machine in him.
Rambo: Last Blood, possibly the last film in the franchise, had the potential to explore the human side of the one-man army and give him a closure that he long deserved as the character was shown leading a life that had the semblance of normalcy, in a ranch. He has a tunnel with booby-traps beneath the ranch, but that could be excused as just one of the Rambo things. The demons of trauma are still lurking underneath, but he has managed to keep a lid on them.
Director Adrian Grunberg (and Sylvester Stallone and Dan Gordon who are credited for the story), however, seemed to have said: f**k closure, lets make him kill some Mexicans.
So, John Rambo goes to Mexico, does some impaling that may have taken a lot of inspiration from Bryan Fuller's Hannibal series, lures the rest of them back to his booby-trapped ranch and kills them all. The plot, because you need to have one to justify all that Rambo rampage on screen, is pretty much “Taken”. Instead of the protagonist's daughter, it is his 'adopted' niece that gets kidnapped.
You know it can all end only one way and it certainly does not involve the baddies surviving with all their limbs intact, not when they are up against Rambo.
Every Rambo staple―impaling, explosions, death by knives, rain of bullets and arrows―are in place. You have seen him do all these with much earnestness in the previous editions. When he takes the fight to the Mexican cartel, although old and haggard, he unleashes upon them savagery that will put the best slasher flicks to shame. The body count may be minimal when compared to the previous editions, but he makes it up by raising the gruesomeness quotient. He drops the bandana too, and instead of the machine gun, picks up a sawed-off shotgun.
Political correctness has never been the forte of the Rambo franchise. Xenophobia touches an unprecedented high when it reaches Last Blood. The very mention of the word Mexico is received with derision from the word go. Every person, including her father, friend and random stranger, that Rambo's niece encounters in Mexico is evil. Don't even get me started with the villains. The movie seems to suggest that all that you need to do to get abducted and sold into sex slavery in Mexico is to set foot in Mexico.
Sylvester Stallone is old, and it shows. He relies heavily on explosions and guerrilla warfare that does not involve moving around much in this movie, which comes across more like the fantasy of an extreme right-winger than a replication of the vintage action flicks.
Stallone had settled to be a mentor figure in the Rocky series, and the decision proved to be wise for both the actor and the character. The fanboy in me just wished the troubled war veteran had a more peaceful swansong than the deranged, xenophobia-fueled, ultraviolent mess that the character was forced into.
Movie: Rambo: Last Blood
Directed by: Adrian Grunberg
Actors: Sylvester Stallone, Paz Vega, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Adriana Barraza, Yvette Monreal
Rating: 1.5/5
