RAMBO: LAST BLOOD has turned up on Amazon Prime and I was in the mood for something undemanding so I watched it last night.
PLOT:
Rambo has found some semblance of peace living on his deceased father's Arizonan horse ranch, with his old friend Maria and her granddaughter Gabrielle, who has sort of become Rambo's adopted daughter because her mum died of cancer and her father was a piece of violent shit who absconded to Mexico.
Rambo is still TROUBLED by his past and maintains a batshit crazy network of tunnels underneath the ranch, where he keeps fucktons of weapons and makes knives and has flashbacks and stuff.
Via a friend who lives in Mexico, Gabrielle hears news of her father's location in Mexico and despite the protests of Maria and Rambo, goes there to find him. Her piece of shit father turns out to be a piece of shit and says piece of shit things to her, and then she is double-crossed by her friend and kidnapped by EVIL MEXICANS who drug her and prostitute her out in their brothel. '40 or 50 men a night' is expected of her, if required.
Rambo goes to save her and gets his ass kicked because he has underestimated the evil Mexicans.
He is nursed back to health by a Mexican journalist whose sister befell the same fate as Gabrielle.
RAMBO ENTERS REVENGE MODE. There is some revenge in Mexico to rescue Gabrielle, and then more revenge back on his Arizonan Kill Factory, once he has lured the rest of the Evil Mexicans there.
Basically there is a lot of revenge. We know this is Rambo's motivation because he says, 'I want revenge'.
REVIEW:
It's not a terrible film. It establishes the characters nicely enough, I bought into Rambo's motivations and his actions made sense in the world it created (so, y'know, it's got that over TLOU2), it's pretty nicely shot, the acting and writing does the job, the effects are good and they clearly had a decent enough budget, and when Rambo gets into ass-kicking mode it's just a case of strapping in and watching Stallone still do a credible job of selling biblical vengeance.
Hammer kills, beheadings, multiple shotgun headshots, exploding bodies, bits getting chopped off people, Rambo CUTTING THE BEATING HEART OUT OF A BADDIE AND SHOWING IT TO HIM, a kill room that looks like something out of Mortal Kombat and general insane levels of revenge violence, Rambo is pissed off and he isn't afraid to show it, it'll take more than a cup of Ovaltine to fix this shit.
It's a bit CGI-esque in places but either there are a decent number of practical effects in there too and/or the CGI manages to not look too much like CGI.
Rest assured, all the stuff that the film sets up in his underground tunnel network, and indeed the A-Team style montage of him making all his traps and general kill machines down there, is paid off in fine style.
The runtime is a mere 89 minutes and about 10 minutes of that is credits, so the film definitely moves along at a brisk pace.
The violence is squishy and brutal, but Mrs Hearthly was half-watching it whilst playing Animal Crossing on the Switch and she didn't have a problem with it, TBH it's sort of a bit cartoony in some regards, such is its excess.
As a straightforward revenge tale that actually manages to bring along just enough heft in the character and story department, you could do worse than this. Ignore the critic review scores because they were being all snooty about it, the viewer review scores are a bit more like it.
Let's be clear however that this film is a million miles removed from FIRST BLOOD, which is one of my favourite films ever (I rewatch it every 3-4 years or so), and indeed the Rambo we see in LAST BLOOD is just Rambo in name only really. This is not a soulful contemplation of what happens when a man who is made into a killing machine finds that the country he fought for has left him behind, and indeed actively rejects him.
705/1000