Plague of Strength

Though I was enthusiastic about Rambo: Last Blood after seeing the red band trailer, I will admit I was skeptical. With Stallone pushing 75, it is hard to picture him as a believable badass. That said, we accept the idea that Jason Statham wouldn’t get pounded to bloody mush by the Rock in film and that chicks under 125 lbs could trash far larger men, so we can suspend disbelief a bit when considering that a former Green Beret ninja murder machine who emerged from Vietnam the most vicious killer on the planet could handle himself as a jacked septuagenarian.

The premise of the final Rambo film is that Rambo has adopted a girl and raised her while living on the Mexican border on a ranch in Arizona. She gets sold into sexual slavery by her biological father and childhood friend after tracking him down in Mexico against her father’s wishes, which of course arouses the ire of America’s most irascible and murderous veteran. What follows is fairly simple- throw John Wick into a blender with The Raid, Hatchet, and the entire Friday the 13th franchise, then set that murder soup loose on the Mexican border with the cartel as the campers/bad guys.

A bold statement, but also incredibly accurate.

Rambo: Last Blood makes Taken look like a fucking children’s tea party. Unlike the original this one lacks even the emotional depth of a serial killer at their day job, but it makes up for that in grittiness and unrelenting rage. Shot in a style very similar to Denzel Washington’s Man on Fire and borrowing Denzel’s penchant for torture, Rambo: Last Blood is a wall-to-wall murderfest following the roughly twenty minutes of setup at the beginning. I was so taken my the endlessly inventive killing that I was surprised when it ended, because it in no way felt like 90 minutes had passed.

With that pacing, the ridiculously serious gore effects, and the slasher-film-worthy kill scenes, you get the impression that the Taken franchise is the world’s most plush microfiber Teddy Ruxpin doll masquerading as a grizzly with rabies, whereas Rambo is perceived to be a geriatric boomer’s feeble last hurrah, but is in actuality one of the goriest slasher flicks in flaunting itself like a Bailey Jay-style trap in the form of an action movie. This is a revenge flick that makes the torture in The Tortured seem like a reasoned response to their mistaken captive’s actual crimes and makes the Last House on the Left remake seem lackluster and uninspired by comparison.

There’s a scene that is an homage to both the Raid 2 and Oldboy, in which Rambo slaughters a bunch of people in a brothel armed only with hate and a claw hammer. At one point he smashes a dude’s collar bone with the “window smasher” butt of his massive knife, then digs his fingers into the found and starts pulling on the shattered end of the bone, threatening to rip it out of the guy’s chest if he doesn’t make with the information. The entire movie could have been a music video for Cannibal Corpse’s three best albums, “The Bleeding”, “Tomb of the Mutilated”, and “Vile”.

This flick is filled with endless dismemberment, beheadings, and booby traps inspired by the Viet Cong, Satan, the Inquisition, and slasher flicks. Rambo kills more people in this movie than fentanyl has, using little more than his massive knife, household items, and the occasional shotgun or bolt action rifle, blowing heads in half, setting people on fire, and just stabbing them like the Slender Man told them to. Kill scenes seem to be equally inspired by The Raid, Friday the 13th, and the apparently boundless depths of rage in Stallone’s deep-black pit of despair he calls a brain. By the end, the final boss is herded to a finale that includes crucifixion by arrows and then the use of Rambo’s really, really big knife.

There is literally only one reason not to watch this movie- you’re too squeamish. Failing that, you must watch this movie as soon as is humanly possible in order to bathe in the warm glow of slaughter and testosterone that no other film in the history of celluloid can provide.

Rambo: Last Blood is available for purchase on Vudu, Youtube, and Google Play, if you’re interested in adding a blood-soaked 90 minute murder boner to your collection.

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