The last time I walked out of a movie was Seth Rogen's "Observe and Report". Sadly, I stayed for the end of Last Blood.
There is nothing here of the haunted soldier from First Blood. Nothing of the man who just wanted to be left alone and resorted to violence only when there was no other option. Honestly, John Rambo would have been better off dying at the end of that film as the original author had intended rather than living for this. What we get instead is a flat, random tough guy who could be anyone.
Spoilers follow
Rambo is now living in Arizona on a ranch where there are no trees and he's built a network of underground tunnels that appear to go nowhere but criss-cross each other frequently and randomly. He lets no one go into them until the granddaughter of his housekeeper wants to have a party and show them off to her friends. It makes no sense at the time, and isn't referenced again.
The girl goes on a hunt for her biological father who abandoned her when she was an infant. He's a bad guy as Rambo observes but she goes off to find him anyway. Many really bad things happen to her, so Rambo goes down to get her back, except he doesn't actually know what her situation is. He just dives right in with gusto and apparently a lifetime of bitter anger, maiming numerous people on his search for the girl. He wanders right into their stronghold and gets beaten severely by about 40 guys. This, as I said, is not John Rambo.
He recovers and THEN decides to go after these guys in a surgical fashion. Where was this tactical expertise just a few days ago? He saves the girl, whose situation isn't good. He just left a woman who wanted to help him and who knew a doctor, but instead of trying to get the girl some help, he just proceeds to drive her home. She dies because he'd rather get her home than find her a doctor to get her some Narcan. Yes, she's dead because this Rambo is a moron.
He goes back, provokes the bad guys with more killings and a decapitation which features our "hero" dropping a head out the window of his pickup by its hair only to bounce down the road as he speeds away. This of course draws them to our side of The Wall (which features in several scenes) and to Rambo's ranch before the big showdown in the tunnels. Many booby traps (but inexplicably, after each one triggers, there's Rambo delivering the death blow or some gratuitous extra bullets) later and we realize that the whole point of the tunnels was to have a place to fight random bad guys he might one day want to bring back to Arizona. Good plan.
In the end, he blows the tunnels, goes all Temple of Doom on the lead bad guy, and literally rides off into the sunset.
I felt degraded, nauseated, and disappointed. The dialog was worthy of an after-school special from the 70s. The shot selection wasn't much better. So many closeups. So many. The violence was right out of Hostel or Saw or any other torture porn film you might care to reference. I actually snorted out loud a few times though whether from revulsion or humor or just the whole absurdity of the thing, I can't be sure.
This was not a Rambo movie. It had no soul, no depth, no gravitas. It was just a revenge & violence fantasy against Mexican traffickers & drug cartels with so many bad decisions from the good guys that the ending wasn't even remotely satisfying. It was just sad. Stallone could have played this character with any other name and it wouldn't have changed the movie. It might have sold fewer tickets, but the movie itself wouldn't have lacked anything for not having "Rambo" in the title.
There is nothing here of the haunted soldier from First Blood. Nothing of the man who just wanted to be left alone and resorted to violence only when there was no other option. Honestly, John Rambo would have been better off dying at the end of that film as the original author had intended rather than living for this. What we get instead is a flat, random tough guy who could be anyone.
Spoilers follow
Rambo is now living in Arizona on a ranch where there are no trees and he's built a network of underground tunnels that appear to go nowhere but criss-cross each other frequently and randomly. He lets no one go into them until the granddaughter of his housekeeper wants to have a party and show them off to her friends. It makes no sense at the time, and isn't referenced again.
The girl goes on a hunt for her biological father who abandoned her when she was an infant. He's a bad guy as Rambo observes but she goes off to find him anyway. Many really bad things happen to her, so Rambo goes down to get her back, except he doesn't actually know what her situation is. He just dives right in with gusto and apparently a lifetime of bitter anger, maiming numerous people on his search for the girl. He wanders right into their stronghold and gets beaten severely by about 40 guys. This, as I said, is not John Rambo.
He recovers and THEN decides to go after these guys in a surgical fashion. Where was this tactical expertise just a few days ago? He saves the girl, whose situation isn't good. He just left a woman who wanted to help him and who knew a doctor, but instead of trying to get the girl some help, he just proceeds to drive her home. She dies because he'd rather get her home than find her a doctor to get her some Narcan. Yes, she's dead because this Rambo is a moron.
He goes back, provokes the bad guys with more killings and a decapitation which features our "hero" dropping a head out the window of his pickup by its hair only to bounce down the road as he speeds away. This of course draws them to our side of The Wall (which features in several scenes) and to Rambo's ranch before the big showdown in the tunnels. Many booby traps (but inexplicably, after each one triggers, there's Rambo delivering the death blow or some gratuitous extra bullets) later and we realize that the whole point of the tunnels was to have a place to fight random bad guys he might one day want to bring back to Arizona. Good plan.
In the end, he blows the tunnels, goes all Temple of Doom on the lead bad guy, and literally rides off into the sunset.
I felt degraded, nauseated, and disappointed. The dialog was worthy of an after-school special from the 70s. The shot selection wasn't much better. So many closeups. So many. The violence was right out of Hostel or Saw or any other torture porn film you might care to reference. I actually snorted out loud a few times though whether from revulsion or humor or just the whole absurdity of the thing, I can't be sure.
This was not a Rambo movie. It had no soul, no depth, no gravitas. It was just a revenge & violence fantasy against Mexican traffickers & drug cartels with so many bad decisions from the good guys that the ending wasn't even remotely satisfying. It was just sad. Stallone could have played this character with any other name and it wouldn't have changed the movie. It might have sold fewer tickets, but the movie itself wouldn't have lacked anything for not having "Rambo" in the title.