Movie Review: Rambo - Last Blood: It’s gory, but who’s complaining

Johnson Thomas

This fifth (hopefully final) installment of the Rambo franchise has Vietnam war veteran John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) reprise his cult defining role as an unhinged avenger, who takes on the system and its affiliations with criminality in an attempt to bring to right its many wrongs. 

Considering this is the fifth installment in the super successful action-thriller series, and in spite of the incessant blood and gore, unaccountable body count, we have been exposed to through these films, Rambo doesn’t appear to have done much damage …or is it that crime is spreading its tentacles faster and wider than even he can curtail?

The narrative begins with John living a secure life for the past eight years, on a ranch with his foster daughter Gabriella (Yvette Monreal) and her grandmother Maria (Adrianna Barraza), in the far outskirts of Arizona not too distant from the den of vice that Mexico has come to represent in American cinema. The loving, protective bond between hulking, ageing Uncle John and 17-year-old Gabriella sets an amiable, intriguing, tone for what is to come. The straight-forward narrative though, is rather generic and plays it by numbers.

Gabriella wants to know about her father but John is non-committal. So, she seeks help from childhood friend Gizelle, resettled in Mexico, who searches him out. John is reluctant to let her visit her father so Gabriella sets out on her own and pays a rather heavy price for that irresponsible mistake. From the haunting restiveness to the murderous final assault, the Grunberg’s narrative fires up to full bloodied savagery, giving the viewer a ringside view of vicarious thrills galore.

The Vietnam war veteran may be pushing 70 + but he still appears to have the ammunition and smarts to take on brutal Mexican sex traffickers with his over-the-top killing style, in an ultra-violent finish that is likely to keep the fans on the edge of their seats. It’s an unsettling murderous assault on the senses that most of the older fans and the new gen viewers are likely to lap up. From what we’ve seen in the past, there are always new takers willing to embrace gory mayhem and revel in this sort of revitalised sado-masochistic genre flick…and mind you, I am not complaining!