“Rambo: Last Blood” is being marketed as Sylvester Stallone’s last hurrah as John Rambo, a now ex-soldier living on a farm with his niece. I have to admit, I have yet to see the first four “Rambo” movies, so I will be talking about the newest entry based on how it stands alone. It also doesn’t seem to require that you have seen the first four movies, as most of Rambo’s character setup for “Last Blood” is given through flashbacks of the previous entries. The set up is really sloppy, just like the rest of this movie. “Last Blood” is an odd hybrid of Liam Neeson’s “Taken” movies and “Home Alone.” An interesting combination for certain, but not one that entirely works.
Sylvester Stallone is always charismatic and is only getting better at his craft with age, but his performance here is incredibly hollow. Sure, his actions are motivated throughout the movie, but I never could get a sense of who John Rambo is outside of his motivation for revenge. He goes on a few rampages and has a few quiet moments, but nothing quite stands out. This also seems to be the movie’s major problem when it comes to certain scenes and if they belong in the movie at all. At times, it seems like “First Blood” wants to be this heroic and emotional send off to Stallone’s character, but in other moments, it wants to be a goofy, 1980s-esque bloodbath with no purpose other than having Stallone kill a bunch of people. Neither tone is established well enough, which leaves both the character and the story rather empty.
The movie’s action sequences, although few and far between, are uber violent. Sometimes, it works to the movies advantage when Rambo is exacting his revenge, but other times it comes off as unnecessarily grotesque. Specifically, a sequence early in the movie features Rambo torturing people to get information in a particularly awful way. It made me think of the character in a negative light, which absolutely wasn’t the movie’s goal. However, my one praise with this movie is its final act which is simply an R-rated “Home Alone.” The kills in the last act are hilariously choreographed and is clearly what the director wanted this movie to be throughout. These final scenes are the only parts of the movie that have a specific type of visual flair to them, which makes it seem like this movie could have been a 20 minute short released online.
“Last Blood” isn’t trying to do anything new, simply relying on old tricks and tactics to get people in a theater to see a tired Stallone mumble for 90 minutes. I was surprised by how much I disliked this movie mainly because Stallone’s return to the “Rocky” franchise was so well done. Being a co-writer on this movie, I thought that maybe Stallone would have put more effort into crafting a better script for Rambo, as he did for Rocky. I’m not really sure who to recommend this movie to because it really is a mixed bag. It’s two different movies combined into one, while never really working together to make something good.
Grade: D+
