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The
real tragedy of John Rambo however is that in that final scene of
First Blood he unfortunately decided against blowing his own fucking
brains out. What's the worst that would have happened if he'd tried?
He might miss? He was supposed to be a crack shot! But that first
movie is incredible and not only would that have been a better ending
but it would have prevented all of the inferior sequels that have
tainted the character’s reputation. I thought that the previous
entry, Rambo, was bad in which the ageing veteran had somehow found a
place in the jungle in which he'd clearly received botox injections.
But this newest instalment, Rambo: Last Blood, is such an abysmal
piece of shit that by the time it had concluded I felt like I knew
how the character had felt when screaming in agony at the end of the
first film. For a start Stallone no longer seems to be playing Rambo
at all, with this film having almost nothing in common with the four
that have gone before. As far as I can tell the character is defined
by his longish hair, bandana, trauma, and the fact that he kills
people in the jungle. But in this new film his mental anguish is
barely touched upon, there's no bandana, the hair has been cut short,
and it all takes place in America and Mexico. It's essentially just
another generic geriatric actioner and if you changed the name of
Rambo to literally anything else then you could easily cast Liam
Neeson instead without a single script change. You'd probably get a
more interesting press tour from Neeson too in which he casually
drops anecdotes about all of the various Mexicans that he's thought
about killing in the past. Probably.
This
film actually begins with Rambo's surrogate daughter telling him that
she wants to go and meet her biological father who she's discovered
is living in Mexico. But when she says the word “Mexico” the
entire cast of characters around her react as though what she's
actually said was fucking “Mordor”. Rambo: Last Blood is one of
the most racist movies that I've seen in recent years with virtually
every character of latino origin depicted as being pure scum. Even
Mexico itself is shown to be full of nothing more than thieves,
rapists, drug addicts, and kidnappers. This is a film that feels
specifically made for Trump’s America and as it gets more and more
offensive you could almost smell the dicks of all the fat little
racists in the audience getting harder. When Rambo then begins his
Mexican killing spree, it's as though the film was made to give those
racists a kick in which their chubby little boners begin to spaff up
like a popped fucking spot. I guess I haven't explained why Rambo
begins killing Mexicans and so lets just say that his surrogate
daughter’s trip to her biological father doesn't go so well for
her. Do you know what fridging is? It's essentially an act in which a
female character is killed, raped, hurt, or in someway dis-powered by
the villain for the sole narrative purpose of providing the hero with
his motivation. I don't want to give too much away but it's so
obvious that the young girl in this movie exists just to be fridged
that she may as well be walking around with the word 'Smeg' branded
onto her fucking forehead.
I
actually rewatched First Blood before coming to this one and it
occurred to me that the main reason that it was so good was because
of all of the physical stunts that we could see Stallone doing
himself. You can almost see the direct line from First Blood to John
Wick too in which a relatively simple set-up becomes the catalyst for
some batshit on screen action. The problem is that Stallone is about
ninety-four or something now and there's not a chance that he could
do even half of that shit anymore. In First Blood Stallone broke his
actual rib during the scene in which Rambo jumps from a cliff and
lands in some trees. In Last Blood there's a pretty good chance that
Stallone would break his hip from simply falling down the fucking
stairs. Of course I love Stallone as much as everybody else but he's
now at an age in which his biggest worry isn't the Vietcong but
simply whether or not he'll survive the cold of Winter. As a result
this movie compensates the lack of real action by replacing it with
some pretty fucking hardcore violence. At the start of the movie
Rambo tells his surrogate daughter that her and her friends can
explore his personal tunnel. Despite sounding like the kind of thing
that John Travolta might say to a masseuse in regards to his own
anus, Rambo means that statement quite literally. For some reason
he's dug a load of tunnels under his own house and it's never quite
explained why. Maybe Rambo really was born from the ground as his
Orc-ish face might suggest or perhaps he's simply turned mad over the
years and taken to killing fucking moles. Either way, it's pretty
obvious from this one line of dialogue that we can probably guess
where the final act is going to fucking take place.
To
describe the final fifteen minutes of this movie as an orgy of gore
wouldn't quite be right, though. In terms of violence I guess that
description fits, but where an orgy is concerned, you'd probably hope
that at least a couple of people are having a good time. Instead, the
movie ends with a literal montage of bad guys exploring the tunnel's
and falling for Rambo's Home Alone-style traps as though the bad guy
from Saw had bought a house from Peter fucking Rabbit. Earlier on in
the movie Rambo gets his face kicked in which causes it to swell and
need stitches. He then grabs a hammer and goes after the people that
did it in a scene that was as though Boris Karloff had decided to
remake fucking Oldboy. Rambo seems to have become so insanely blood
thirsty over the years that this movie felt like a horror movie
villain had been given the chance to direct their own biopic. Imagine
if Jason Voorhees had decided to tell the story of his adult life but
in the style of a late 80's Dolph Lundgren film and you're not far
off from what this is. But there's no sense of fun or wit to the
violence, as there might be in a John Wick movie. Instead, Last Blood
plays out like a serial killer that's channel flicking between snuff
movies to the point that it became an unintentional spoof of itself.
I guess that the title Rambo: Last Blood is some indication that it
will be the final film in the series. For the sake of the series I
suggest that we all pretend to be as brain-damaged as the main
character clearly is and forget that all of the films after the first
one actually fucking happened. Thanks for reading, motherfuckers, and
see you next time.
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