Overall verdict: 6/10
The Good: Emotionally impactful, terrific acting, excellent music, explores the plight of illegal sex trafficking victims.
The Bad: shoddy editing, mediocre filming style, small scale action, ultimately fails to give proper closure.
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On first viewing, RAMBO: LAST BLOOD feels like an unnecessary sequel, undoing the near perfect closure that 2008’s JOHN RAMBO gave us. In terms of scale, it is certainly the “smallest” Rambo movie and one chock full of issues. But after a while it sunk in how much like a Rambo movie this is.
RAMBO LAST BLOOD seems like a deconstruction of Rambo 3 the same way i felt JOHN RAMBO was a deconstruction of Rambo 2. Rambo has accepted a peaceful life in the countryside when someone personally close to him embarks on a dangerous Mission and gets captured.
Rambo attempts a rescue, fails in the first attempt, gets hurt bad but bounces back, succeeds in the second, and there’s even a battle in an underground location. The only thing missing is the large scale land battle at the end. On a whole, it presents a more personal stake for John as compared to the last movie.
The deconstruction comes in how the familiar scenes play out from Rambo 3 and the dark twists they take. Rambo infiltrating an enemy stronghold: you’d expect him to get in, silently taking down all opposition, and then blow stuff up on his way out. But what you get is Rambo being left a broken bloody mess because he went in with no backup or prep. The rescue? You’d expect a tense running battle and Rambo successfully extracting the captive. But what you get is a somewhat uneventful drive home that ends in tears. If anything, this movie rivals FIRST BLOOD in terms of personal tragedy for John Rambo making Rambo 3 seem like a cartoon in comparison.
The movie itself does what past Rambo films do: bring attention to a social issue overlooked by mainstream media. In the first and second it was the plight of Vietnam veterans, in the third it was the afghan people, the fourth was the conflict in Myanmar. In this one, it’s the illegal cross border prostitution by Cartels. There are parallels drawn between this modern “war” and wars of old such as the abuse of the kidnapped girls mirroring the demeaning treatment of POWs, or the strike against Rambo’s ranch being this flipped call back to the Vietcong’s infamous use of tunnels against foreign troops.
While I love the sometimes too real performances by the various actors, particularly Stallone’s more vulnerable take on Rambo, along with the aforementioned deconstruction and the themes, RAMBO LAST BLOOD is far from a perfect movie. The performances are often marred by the director’s obsession with having the camera way too close to the characters’ faces for no apparent reason. Camerawork is nothing special and lacks any “wow” factor.
The overall look and feel of the movie resembles a direct to video sequel at best. The opening forest rescue in the storm is murky dark probably to hide the sub par CGI used for the avalanche and flood. Same goes to any other sequence that relies on CGI like computer generated explosions straight out of a tv show. For the action scenes, they typically consist of quick cuts and shakey cam along with some scenes where the footage was obviously sped up to make the stunts look more impactful. Again, it feels small, shuttling back and forth between Rambo’s ranch, a Mexican border town, and back again.
Not helping matters is a slip shod editing of the movie. You can have a scene developing, building tension, like when Gabriella is wandering deeper into gang territory across the border and then it suddenly cuts to a totally unrelated scene of Rambo tending to his horse for like 20 second before cutting back to Gabriella. New characters like an undercover reporter with a personal grudge against the Mexican cartel gets introduced half way and then forgotten by the third act.
All these factors combined makes this only my second least favourite Rambo movie just ahead of RAMBO 3. It makes up for the less emotional JOHN RAMBO and I can understand how overriding the happy ending of that movie with this movie might upset many fans. For me, I just wish this movie was given to a more competent director and production team. I liked it, but I definitely did not need it.
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Entertainment: C+
Story: C-
Acting: A-
Characters: B+
Music: B+
Replay value: C
"Brains": B-
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