Rambo: Last Blood

Rambo could actually choose between two genres. Either following in the footsteps of the first installment, it could have been a drama about war trauma or the godless action carnage of an unbreakable machine along the lines of all the other installments. Except it doesn't have a second option because of the protagonist's limitations, and it's too stupid for the first one. Because of the protagonist's limitations. Sylvester Stallone is one of Hollywood's most annoying stars. His incessant need for self-presentation, dabbling in scripting and production, grandiose declarations and the gloriola of his own supposed wise old man's modesty twisted the entirety of Rambo: Last Blood into a very agonizingly twisted corpse that is incapable of meeting even the simplest expectations of an action movie. The first twenty minutes are a celebration of honest work, in which we watch a sweaty Stallone exercise a horse, a sweaty Stallone hammer a nail, a sweaty Stallone spin some wheels, or a sweaty Stallone forge an iron bar. There are no action scenes in the film, just a bunch of shots of the protagonist hitting someone with a hammer or a knife. The final confusion, where we watch fifty people casually walking down identical corridors and randomly falling into some traps, is the most disturbing film finale of the year. Most importantly, please make this 'old-school and honest' spectacle all animated next time. Who's supposed to watch those digital flames and funny pools of blood? (21/12/2019)

The story is simple as a Justin Bieber fan, but surprisingly it does makes sense. Like the previous episodes, this is a prime Republican flick, where even the Bulgarian production background doesn't matter. And Stallone, even though he's over seventy, is still badass, he doesn't come across as over-the-top in his iconic position, and it never occurred to me while watching that he should call it a day. And many thanks for the lack of political correctness, Sly never gave a toss about that. (20/09/2019)

The trailers didn't promise a fundamentally accomplished film, but I still believed I would get one in the cinema. Well, I didn't. The Fifth Rambo is not very good , but not because of the craftsmanship, lack of action or cheapness. Rather, it's because it's not really Rambo. It's more like Emo-Rambo. Sylvester Stallone spends an hour and a quarter trying to look like a man struggling with his inner demons and a past of violence, but appreciating that something good has finally come into his life. And it takes him a hell of a long time to turn into the Rambo we know and love (or at least I do). We don't really see any action until the last half hour and it's extremely brutal and for a while I felt like I was watching a crossover of Saw and Friday the 13th rather than Rambo, but I didn't mind. What bothered me was the hour and a quarter before that, in which they completely nonsensically devote space to new characters and try to explore the inner workings of a cinematic warrior. Regardless of the fact that there's not really much there, and we already saw the little there is in the fourth outing. If it weren't called Rambo, I'd probably be more forgiving of this whiny B movie and the wait for the finale. But as a conclusion to a classic action franchise, it's unnecessary at best. And quite sad at times. (18/09/2019)

I like the way Sylvester Stallone has worked with Rambo and made him into a regular tragic hero over the years, and I saw something almost Shakespearean in his thinking and actions this time. Seriously. When he warns his niece about finding her estranged father, he talks about pure evil and how there's no getting rid of it... Of course, it's obvious to everyone what happens next. But it's knowing it that makes this scene so powerful, because we see Rambo suffer without exactly being cut with a knife, and we realize that he may have come home and is living at home, but he's not really home. From this perspective, the first part of the film (which I so often read is soap operatic, boring, long, drawn out, and all over the place) is extremely important and, more importantly, interesting. Then, when it comes to Rambo's trip to Mexico and the chain is broken, it's inevitably and maximally brutal at best, because no one has ever hurt Rambo before like this time and he's going to pay it back in kind (the showdown with the main villain shows that if there's one thing Rambo doesn't enjoy, it's metaphors). So if you're just expecting the final carnage and don't care about John Rambo the character at all, stay home and don't spoil the movie's rating. (21/09/2019)

Rambo has changed in the last two episodes and it's understandable because Stallone has changed, too. While the first three episodes show Rambo as essentially a good guy cornered by the political system and other people's prejudices, the last two episodes refer very well to current issues in the world today and the inability to systematically address them effectively enough. It doesn't matter if it's tribal wars in Burma or hunting prostituted girls in Mexico. Both are and have been more or less topical, and both Stallone and Grunberg are keeping within identical intentions and boundaries. So the last episode is still a relatively dark, raw carnage, only that it moves from the natural jungle to the urban jungle, with similar results and message – it is there, you just need to find among the clichés that surrounds it. Because yes, somehow a simple revenge story has to be grafted onto that core in order to even make it to the cinemas and at least be somewhat appealing to those viewers who only see the peripheral attributes of explicit violence, cool weapons and an iconic hero. The objections are that it's not quite the same, but when compared to the original films, which had a completely different focus and defined 1980s action. You have to take into account that this is still the same hero at the core, just living in a different time, in a different world. It doesn't reach the high-octane carnage of the previous episode, but I take the melancholic first half as well as the second one any day. (23/09/2019)