Chennai: Maintaining bright runs for a franchise is too big a task. It calls for a screenplay that, for obvious reasons, should be better than the first, should have actors with strong character development and every other necessary ingredient like better music, action, twists, and turns, to make the flick right. But then there are movies which are just a repetition of the first film in a series. Such is the case for Rambo.
The series that has long since run its course, returns after nearly a decade with the mountain of a man – Sylvester Stallone as John Rambo – eager to helm arrows of justice into the heart of his enemies (quite literally). Rambo: Last Blood is the dumbest, goriest and most stomach-churning film of the franchise. It is disturbingly violent and is definitely not for the faint-hearted.
Rambo now lives in Arizona in his family ranch tending horses, fixing machines, trucks, and pumps by the garage and maintains a maze of tunnels underneath the land (You’ll wonder why!). His niece Gabrielle (Yvette Monreal) is a high-school girl who longs to understand the reason why her father left to Mexico. Rambo tries to explain not to dig into the past. However she leaves without informing him to Mexico with the help of her friend. Obviously, things don’t go the way she plans and ends up becoming a sex slave for a drug cartel. Now, it’s up to Rambo to get her back.
The film, as always, executes its usual dose of character arc; Rambo gets beaten down by the bad guys; tattooed, gun-wielding bulky baddies, only to be rescued by Carmen Delgado (Paz Vega) – a journalist – who reports about the cartel. Then he heals and sketches a plan to make his enemy bleed. What makes it unbearable is the amount of blood, bone-breaking punches, and hacking scenes that follows in his quest to make them pay.
The last twenty minutes is bound to make you close your eyes. Rambo sets booby traps throughout his tunnels and the bad guys get minced as if they are rag dolls. In the end, Rambo takes the audiences’ blood for making them queasy and muddling their brains with xenophobic depiction of Mexicans, bland drama, soulless acting, and crass violence.