Rambo: Last Blood is Thinner than Water

In 1982, Sylvester Stallone starred in a film called First Blood. In this film he played the disaffected Vietnam veteran John Rambo, after discovering a friend he traveled by foot in the State of Washington to visit had died of cancer from exposure to the chemical Agent Orange, used as chemical warfare during the police action in Vietnam. Continuing his pedestrian journey through the State of Washington, he wanders into a small town called Hope but is met by the town Sheriff (an amiable yet menacing Brian Dennehy) who runs him out of town. Not having any of that, turns right back around and is arrested by the Sheriff for vagrancy. After suffering abuse at the hand of the Sheriff’s deputies, he strikes back and breaks free.

What followed was an exciting, even if implausible, thriller of one man’s effort to survive the woods of Washington while Sheriff’s, police and finally military personnel all close in on the veteran while he continues to outsmart and outfight them. Upon it’s release, the film was met with mixed reviews, but with only a $15 million budget pulled in a little over a $125 million in world wide box office receipts. This led to sequels that themselves became more and more cartoonish in their portrayal of John Rambo and the villains. However, the first sequel; Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) pulled in a whopping $300 million at the box-office off of a $25 million budget.

Rambo III (1988) cost upwards of $60 million to make but only pulled in $189 million in box-office receipts, and it appeared as if the Rambo series had run its course. In the 2000’s and after a DVD release of the first film, critics began to reevaluate that film many heaping praise upon it’s three leads, especially Stallone. So, in 2008 Stallone released Rambo, a flawed but earnest recall to the first films more dark and sober tone and one that offered a fitting and satisfying end to John Rambo’s journey. Even so, Stallone just had to make another one, and so he did.

Rambo: Last Blood is the fifth installment of the Rambo series and unlike his 2008 effort, this one reverts right back to the cartoonish shenanigans of the previous sequels, although still somewhat retaining the somber tone of the first and fourth. At the end of 2008’s Rambo we see John going home to maybe reconnect with his father. At the opening of Last Blood we learn that Rambo’s dad is dead, but his maid Maria (Academy award winning Adriana Barraza) and her granddaughter Gabriela (Yvette Monreal) have stayed on to help John manage his fathers horse ranch. For the past ten years, Rambo as acted as a surrogate father figure for Gabriela, but she yearns to meet her biological father.

She informs John that a friend of hers in Mexico has located where her father is and has decided to go down there, against the wishes of both John and Maria, to present herself to her father. Of course, as the cartoonish script can’t resist, her father rejects Gabriella and to make matters worse, her friend has sold her out to a cartel who specializes in abduction of young women to prostitute. The rest of the movie is, of course, John Rambo against the cartel in a desperate and doomed mission to save Gabriella. As a screenwriter, Sylvester Stallone has long oscillated between greatness (he wrote Rocky) and vacuous ridiculousness. This script (Matthew Cirulnick shares credit) is unfortunately the latter.

The movie isn’t without its moments. A wordless moment between Rambo and Maria after John has failed to return her granddaughter alive is terrific, but these kind of scenes are few and far between as the movie is much more concerned with violent killing of two-dimensional villains. There is some nuance and depth to Stallone’s performance as John Rambo, but all in all it is just a cheesy action thriller in a long line of cheesy Stallone action thrillers.