Hopefully that title is a promise, unless some twit decides we deserve Rambo: Last Blood Part Two.
I can’t figure out, for the life of me, how they messed up something as simple as this movie. I say ‘messed up’ but what I’m really referring to is… well, if ever a film betrayed signs of re-shoots and hasty confused editing trying to keep all of its eighteen executive producers, plus its additional five co-executive producers, plus its additional four producers content with what all their hard ‘producing’ finally produced onto the screen… well, I guess my answer is all there. A Rambo film is the simplest thing in the world, or should be, and it certainly doesn’t need twenty-seven possibly conflicting voices in the mix (I didn’t bother counting the ‘line producers’ I was getting dizzy enough as it is). I mean, this is Rambo; you put him into conflict with bad guys and raise the stakes/tension until releasing it in an orgy of cathartic violence as Rambo destroys and mutilates scum who totally deserve it. I could write it over a weekend.
After the frankly amazingly surprisingly good Rambo from 2008 (how on Earth it has taken so many years to follow that success with a fifth film is remarkable in itself) this film is a terrible disappointment. Its not a complete disaster, but it too cynically, I think, copies everything from that fourth film and wastes a promising premise that pits Rambo against a Mexican crime syndicate/private army past due a visit from the Grim Reaper. I mean these bad guys are Scum with a very definite capital ‘S’ and, well, I was hardly expecting a blood-soaked Sicario but this was a pretty incredibly dumb movie. Any teenage niece who is forbidden to drive across the border to her estranged father but who then drives off ‘to my freinds house, promise’ the next morning is… well, Rambo is actually somehow shocked but nobody watching the film is. Irresponsible parenting, Rambo, that’s what I call it. You ground her her and let her sulk awhile. You just let her drive off, well, you only got yourself to blame for what happens.
Oh well. At least the action when it comes is graphic and shocking enough to keep us awake and cheer Rambo up (he’s never really happier than when he’s disembowelling someone or tearing his heart out or snapping bones or blowing scum up and he can turn it into art, clearly). Its just a shame that somehow such a simple premise gets so confused (why does Rambo just walk unprepared into a stronghold of over 40 bad guys if its isn’t just an excuse to beat the shit out of Rambo yet again and make things even more personal?).
Not a complete disaster I suppose and with ever further reduced expectations it might get better a second and third time. I mean, its Rambo, ‘innit?