It was my second weekend of having my Regal Unlimited Movie Subscription Pass, and it feels like I’m seeing movies for free. I’ve already saved $13.65 so one more movie and I’m in the black for the month. Though a bad movie does have a cost associated with it and it was a high cost for Rambo: Last Blood. It’s hard to tell if the bad guys in Last Blood suffer more than the audience.
I’ll admit that I went into the film with low expectations. Accepting the fact that whatever we got, it would not be a new idea. I had wanted the last Rambo movie to be a Walking Tall tale with a little Equalizer thrown in for good measure. In my story, he’s retired in a small town, much like where it all started, and some bad guys come into town and try to take over. Rambo cleans up the mess and all is right with the world. When I heard that the story was Taken from…well, just read below and you’ll know why I was disappointed.
In Last Blood, John J. Rambo is living on a ranch in Arizona with a housekeeper (Adriana Barraza) and her granddaughter (Yvette Monreal), who refers to our hero as Uncle John. Rambo has aged so that he now looks like, well, he looks like Sylvester Stallone did on The Tonight Show a few weeks ago. Not sure if that is what they were going for, or if it’s indicative of the effort put into this film. Either way, it’s not good. It’s hard to intimidate when you’re wearing that much make up. Rambo is training horses and digging a maze of tunnels under the ranch. Hopefully that will pay off later. The “niece” runs off to Mexico to find her father in hopes of getting some answers as to why he left her. She gets drugged, kidnapped, and forced into sex slavery. John goes to Mexico to utilize his very particular set of skills, skills he acquired over a very long career, to bring the young girl home. First, he gets his ass kicked, then he recovers, and now he’s mad. He gets the girl and brings her home.
Not much action or violence thus far. Luckily, our villains send a ridiculous amount of well-armed men to Arizona to get her back. The previously mentioned tunnels are booby-trapped because our hero knew all these men were coming. How? Stallone was one of the writers. Director Adrian Grunberg then proceeds to create one long scene in which all the bad guys are slaughtered in record time with plenty of blood. John is really mad this time.
SPOILER ALERT.
In what is an unnecessary turn of events, the young girl dies on the way back from Mexico. Ultimately, Rambo was going to protect his home and family, so she didn’t need to die, but the revenge element allowed for more brutal killings than we have seen in the past.
Rambo: Last Blood comes in at one hour and 29 minutes making it the shortest Rambo adventure. Thank you for that.
Recommendation: I can’t recommend that you see this film, even when it hits TBS in a few weeks. What I can do is recommend that Stallone make another Rambo film. Perhaps the one I described.
After two trips to the theater, I still like my Regal Unlimited movie subscription pass. To see if I get my money’s worth, I’m going to track it here as I review the movies I see.
- Trip #2 Savings (One ticket $12.00) + (Concessions discount 10% off $12.50 combo = $1.25): $13.25
- Savings to date: $26.90
- Regal Unlimited for 12 months: $282.00.
