Rambo: Last Blood.

John Rambo fights what is likely to be his last battle...

Release Date: Sept. 20, 2019. Running Time: 89 minutes (theatrical), 101 minutes (extended cut). Screenplay: Matthew Cirulnick, Sylvester Stallone. Producer: Avi Lerner, Kevin King Templeton, Yariv Lerner, Les Weldon. Director: Adrian Grünberg.

NOTE: This review is based on the extended international version.


THE PLOT:

Rambo has returned home, having inherited his family's Arizona horse ranch. He lives on the ranch with his housekeeper, Maria (Adriana Barraza) and her granddaughter, Gabriela (Yvette Monreal), who has a father/daughter relationship with Rambo. He still suffers from PTSD and mostly keeps to himself, though he does occasionally help the local police by acting as a tracker.

Gabriela hears from an old school friend, Gizelle (Fenessa Pineda), who moved back to Mexico. Gizelle tells Gabriela that her long-estranged father is living in the very same town, prompting Gabriela to make a trip across the border to try to reunite with him.

When she doesn't return, Rambo - realizing where she has gone - follows her across the border. He learns that she has been kidnapped by a cartel run by the Martinez Brothers: the erratic Victor (Óscar Jaenada) and the coldly ruthless Hugo (Sergio Peris-Mencheta). They intend to force Gabriela into prostitution, and respond to Rambo's interference with immediate violence - prompting the old Green Beret to go to war one last time!

Gabriela (Yvette Monreal), Rambo's surrogate daughter, is kidnapped by a Mexican drug cartel.

CHARACTERS:

Rambo: This film has plenty of flaws, but Sylvester Stallone gives a fully committed performance.  As in most of the previous films, his nonverbal acting is what really sells the character.  Rambo may have found a measure of peace in his new life, but he remains haunted by his past. The local sheriff casually refers to him as a "Vietnam burnout," which seems accurate enough.  Rambo spends much of his time hunched in tunnels he has dug beneath his property, listening to Vietnam-era music while recalling his past. When Gabriella argues that her father might have changed because Rambo did, he replies that he hasn't changed - He just struggles to "keep a lid on" his old rage. As the story progresses, that rage begins to boil - until, when he approaches the villainous Hugo at the very end, he's all but loping toward him like an animal coming to claim its kill.

Gabriela: Yvette Monreal, as the stubborn but disastrously naive Gabriella, is almost an equal lead for the film's first half.  Unfortunately, Monreal's performance is much weaker than Stallone's. She does some decent nonverbal acting, as when she reacts to her birth father's rejection or to her new situation after her abduction.  However, her actual line deliveries tend to fall flat, particularly in the early scenes that establish the relationship between her and Rambo, which makes it much harder to get invested in her as a character than if the performance had been just a bit better.

Carmen: A Mexican journalist who has obsessively followed the Martinez brothers since her sister suffered the same fate as Gabriela. She rescues Rambo after he narrowly survives an ambush, then provides exposition about the region's human trafficking and prostitution problems. Paz Vega does well with what she's given, but Carmen is more plot device than character. Near the end, Rambo returns to her to ask for help... but we never actually see how she helps him (not even in the longer version), making me suspect something was cut that should have been retained.

Hugo: The primary villain. We're introduced to him talking to another crime boss about expanding his business, in a sequence that mainly exists to establish the relationship between him and his brother, Victor: Victor is a cokehead who behaves erratically, while Hugo is the more level-headed (and thus more dangerous) of the two. Actor Sergio Peris-Mencheta manages to invest a hint of real menace, which helps to elevate Hugo above the generic baddie he's been scripted as.  Still, as Rambo villains go, I'd have to rank him below all the others save for Rambo III's pathetic Col. Zaysen.  As is also true of Adriana Barraza and Paz Vega, the actor is good; but he's simply not given anything interesting to do.

Rambo and Gabriela, in happier times.

THOUGHTS:

Rambo: Last Blood opened to the kind of critical drubbing usually reserved for slasher movies and direct-to-streaming action cheapies. It was bashed as clichéd, brutal, stupid, and even racist. Of those criticisms, I'd only seriously argue with the last one; there are at least as many sympathetic Latino characters in the film as villainous ones (not counting cannon fodder), and I'm fully prepared to attach a "dregs of humanity" label to human traffickers of any ethnicity. I'd have a hard time rating Last Blood as any more anti-Latino than Taken was anti-French.

In its longer cut at least, I don't find it to be anywhere near as bad as its reputation. This is mostly a serviceable action flick, and it is greatly elevated by an excellent Sylvester Stallone performance; in this film, particularly in its second half, Rambo feels not so much world-weary as outright world-beaten, and his characterization makes a surprisingly good companion piece to the (much better) previous film.

Sadly, I can't argue with the comparisons of this film to direct-to-video action fodder.  Stallone may deliver his "A" game, but the rest of this feels decidedly "B" grade.  David Morrell, the author of the novel First Blood, blasted it by observing that the main character might as well have been named "John Smith" for all the difference it would make to the plot, and I'd mostly agree with that assessment.

Still, evaluated not as a Rambo film but just as a mean, nasty little "B" action movie, it's not a bad one. Does the climax resemble a blood-soaked, Vietnam-themed Home Alone minus the laughs? Sure, but so did the climax to Skyfall - and as in that film, the final set piece manages to be grimly effective.

Rambo falls afoul of Mexican cartel members in the lawless town of... er, Mexico.

GENERIC SETTINGS

By Hollywood action movie standards, the Rambo films have generally done well in portraying their settings: small-town Washington; (comic book) Vietnam; a grimly realistic war-torn Burma. Even the otherwise woeful Rambo III managed to slip in references to Afghan history and culture. This is the first Rambo movie that completely fails in this regard. The action takes place in two main areas: "Generic Mexican City" and "Generic Ranch."

I suspect the crime-controlled Mexican town is meant to be Juarez. So why not name it as such, with some details specific to that city? The scenes with Carmen, the journalist, would seem ready-made for efficiently telling us how the regular townspeople go about their lives amidst the corruption and violence... But no, we get no details at all to convince us that we're anywhere other than in a studio lot. Show this movie to aliens from outer space, and they couldn't be faulted for assuming that "Mexico" is the name of a particularly lawless town rather than a country.  Heck, replace all mentions of "Mexico" with "Mos Eisley," and it would remain the exact same movie... only possibly with lightsabers!

Rambo's ranch is just as bland. We see him breaking horses, but we are given no sense of who his clients might be, how much business he gets, what other work is done, or how he keeps the place afloat. We see only a couple of horses, no crops, no other animals, and no workers beyond his housekeeper. We don't know where this ranch is located in relation to other Arizona towns; all we know is that it is "near the border." It's what I'd expect in a first draft, a stopgap waiting for the writer to add some texture based on research. 

Lest I come across as too negative, let me repeat: Last Blood is, in my opinion, a much better movie than Rambo III. It's basically a Taken knockoff... but it's a better one than either of Taken's actual sequels (admittedly a low bar). Still, it's easily the laziest entry in a series that has often been dumb, but that has never before been this generic.

A Rambo film isn't a Rambo film without a bow and arrow..

VERSIONS

I'm basing this review on the 101-minute international version, which is likely why the tone of my review is less negative than most US critics were. A full 12 minutes were shaved off for the US theatrical release, which honestly baffles me. At 101 minutes, Last Blood is already short by action movie standards, and it's briskly paced. After watching the movie, I went online to look up what was cut... and that made me even more baffled.

The major removal is of the opening scenes, which show Rambo volunteering to rescue three hikers lost in a storm. He is only able to save one of the hikers: one woman is already dead when he arrives, and her husband refuses to accept the truth and runs from his would-be rescuer. Not only is this far more cinematic than "Rambo works on his ranch," but it establishes via action the character's guilt and his need to try to save somebody, both of which will drive him through the story to follow.

Also removed: Scenes with Rambo and Gabriela that create a sense of their bond; a scene with Rambo and Gabriela's grandmother that establishes them as an ad-hoc family; references to Rambo's PTSD; and a scene that lays out the relationship, hierarchy, and individual personalities of the villainous Martinez brothers.

Basically, it seems that any slivers of thematic unity, characterization, or character arc were removed.  Now, I'm quite sure this film would have received negative reviews in any case. Still, I can't help but wonder if the tone of those reviews might have been less hostile had the editors not yanked out the film's heart, leaving only the blood and guts behind.

Rambo waits for his prey to fall into his trap.

OVERALL:

In its longer version, Rambo: Last Blood doesn't live down to its worst reviews. On the other hand, even in its extended version, it feels less like a Rambo film than like a "B" action flick that the Rambo character was grafted onto.

I find myself reflecting again that Stallone should have let it rest with the fourth film. That movie, a genuinely good one, saw Rambo come full circle by saving Sarah and then returning home. In its extended version, this film really isn't bad... but in terms of the larger series, it barely qualifies as a minor epilogue.


Overall Rating: 5/10.

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