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Rambo: Last Blood is a pure revenge story (review)

Here is a lesson for all children.

Usually when your parents tell you not to do something, and you have no reason to believe they would try to hurt you, it is because it’s a bad idea.

Rambo: Last Blood started calmly enough. John Rambo seemed like he had retired on his dad’s farm near the Mexico border. He lived there with his close friend Maria and her granddaughter Gabriela. Both were very dear to his heart and he considered them family.

John managed his PTSD by taking medication to “keep a lid” on his issues as he told his niece, Gabriella. Though he still built himself tunnels under the farm grounds and that is where he stayed.

Unfortunately, Gabriela wanted to find her abusive father after she graduated high school and against Maria and John’s advice, she traveled to Mexico to see him after one of her friends found out where he lived.

I’ll say this. Her friend was shifty from the moment we saw her. She was clearly not as naive as Gabriela. And when Gabriela was pretty disowned (again) by her father instead of going back to her friend’s house, the opted to go to a club. It may not have been a setup, but it might as well have been because Gabriela had no business being there.

That’s when Gabriela was drugged and abducted by the cartel.

Very sad.

I screamed at the movie screen, “Rambo I need your spidey sense to go off!” But it didn’t go off fast enough. However, word got back to Maria. She then told John and then he drove to Mexico to retrieve his niece.

He stopped taking his meds, almost smacked up her “friend”, and tracked down the cartel member responsible for selling off his niece. This gives you an idea of the headspace he was in.

Rambo: Last Blood is not easy on the mind. It’s not a feel-good heroic story. It’s sad and horrifying. When John’s niece is finally rescued she dies because of a bunch of reasons. I’m pretty sure it was mostly because they kept drugging her.

Rambo does not save the day. Rambo: Last Blood is a pure revenge story.

In the final act of the movie, Rambo goes after Gabriela’s captures and leads them back to the tunnels he’s had prepared for years under his farm. We get an intense preparation montage and then it’s on when the cartel comes to his doorsteps to avenge their fallen.

From the time they arrive on the farm, it is non-stop action. This part of the movie was amazing. Shotguns, claymores, grenades, secret passageways, and John was surgical with the shotgun. The fact that he played his own soundtrack to throw the enemies off and get them frazzled in the tunnels made Rambo feel like the iconic character that we know him as.

And finally, Rambo gets 1 on 1 with the person who ordered the demise of his niece. He tells him that he is going to gonna rip his heart out and then he actually does it! Man, what a scene!

The whole third act was nonstop impact action and excitement that keeps you looking at the screen without blinking. I am confused about if Rambo is dead or not due to injuries he sustained at the end of the movie, but either way, this is one of the best of the franchise.