Rambo: Last Blood Movie Review

Rambo: Last Blood (2019)

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Written by: Matthew Cirulnick & Sylvester Stallone (screenplay by),  Dan Gordon & Sylvester Stallone(story by), David Morrell (based on the character created by)
Directed by: Adrian Grunberg
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Paz Vega, Sergio Peris-Mencheta
Rated: R
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Plot
Rambo must confront his past and unearth his ruthless combat skills to exact revenge in a final mission.

Verdict
Few movies lack substance to the degree of this movie. I'm convinced this movie started out as something unrelated and got the Rambo name just from a marketing standpoint. It's an ultra violent Taken on a farm scenario that adds nothing to that genre. It's beyond bad.

Skip it.

Review
This is Home Alone remade for adults upping the violence and gore to ridiculous levels. Rambo has created a death trap house. I started this movie wondering, what's the point. I still wonder.

If you think Rambo can take this crowd, he can't.

Rambo is living on a ranch and has PTSD. Through some rather contrived scenes Rambo has to rescue his niece. I assumed this would be Taken in Mexico but Rambo's first rescue effort ends poorly. He then rescues his niece early on. At this point I assumed he would go back to destroy the crime ring. Instead Rambo lures the crime ring to him and creates many gruesome booby traps. The reasons why Rambo has all these tunnels under his farm isn't that he "likes to dig," it's for the right moment to create an elaborate system of traps. Rambo plans ahead.

The entire movie is rather gory. Squibs are flying everywhere. If this movie had some substance I'd let that pass, but this movie seems to exist just to gross out the audience with maiming and killings. Rambo's traps are gruesome.

Sylvester Stallone plays John Rambo.

At no point did I like this movie, but it lost me when Rambo cuts open the main bad guy's chest, rips out his heart and tells him, "This is how it feels." That's just a bit much. This movie is beyond bad. This could be just a revenge on rails movie, but it isn't that. First Blood was a mentally wounded veteran unsure of his place in the world. Rambo V has no reason to exist.

First Blood (1982) was about PTSD, war, and how that affects people. The second and third movie became action romps. The credits are a montage of the franchise in an effort to link them, but this movie in no way feels like part of the franchise.