I bet you didn’t even know there was a new Rambo movie.
Anyways... A good friend asked me out to the movies two nights ago, saying we should go see whatever the worst-reviewed movie was. Boom. That’s already a more interesting plot than what I’m about to review for your pleasure below.
The verdict..?
Garbage. And I LIKE stupid shoot-em-up flicks, and cheesy 80's action hero’s.
The plot revolved around a young women (Rambo’s adopted daughter more-or-less) inexplicably deciding to travel to Mexico in search of her real father after getting tipped of to his location, despite knowing that he’s a terrible dude who left her as a child and routinely beat her mother. So... Why did she want to meet him..?
To move the plot forward, duh.
Rambo and generic stepmother tell her it’s a bad idea to cross the border in search of her murderous father, she sneaks off because “teenager” and... Ends up being killed by someone who has absolutely zero affiliation to the dad, who is seen briefly and then completely discarded by the film.
But that’s okay, because when Mr. Rambo finds out about his adopted daughter’s death then all that silly “plot” stuff is finally over and the movie hits you over the head with what really matters!
Torture porn!
Seriously, take Saw (like the 6th or 7th one, not the groundbreaking first movie), add in generic 80's action movie, a sprinkle of social commentary, and remove any traces of that special spice that makes us remember some of the dumbest action flicks fondly and what you’re left with is Rambo: Last Blood.
Rambo kills one of the gang leaders responsible for the girl’s death, and leads the rest of the gang back to his farm where he’s spent days and days setting up traps. We know this because there was a musical montage! Rambo kills the Mexican gangsters one after another with bow and arrow, various guns, sharpened stakes, trap pits, and a plethora of knives to the groin (seriously, seems to be his signature move) and upon killing the last dude, dies offscreen to a gunshot wound.
Cue credits.
The cast sucks, the acting is so far from believable it makes horror movies seem like documentaries by comparison, the dialouge is wooden and contrived, the fights are uninspired quick-cut messes, and at 100 minutes it feels oddly short and crammed together, as if the studio decided last minute that no one would care enough to stay for the full two hours it was supposed to run.
John Wick has some surprising parallels here, but in every way that Keanu Reeves’ masterpiece delivers, Rambo falls flat.
This one isn’t even worth a watch when drunk and browsing Netflix two months from now. 1/10