USA 2019
Opening September 19, 2019

Directed by: Adrian Grunberg
Writing credits: Matthew Cirulnick, Sylvester Stallone
Principal actors: Sylvester Stallone, Paz Vega, Yvette Monreal, Óscar Jaenada, Sergio Peris-Mencheta

Sometimes, there is a film released that is so over-the-top terrible that it is difficult to understand how it made it through the pipeline without someone along the way putting it out of its misery. This grotesque great-grandchild of First Blood (1982) has devolved into such a sad state that one could be forgiven for thinking it a parody. Rambo: Last Blood is like a potpourri of bad action tropes mixed together to form a soulless film which uncomfortably feeds into the American jingoistic narrative.

The only way to value this (hopefully final) Rambo film is to completely turn off the reasonable, empathetic, and thoughtful parts of your brain and only let baseness remain. Maybe then it is possible to enjoy watching an elderly Sylvester Stallonego around gruesomely murdering Mexican cartel members with a hammer, bow and arrow, knife, and various deadly traps in his tunnels of horror. There is really nothing else to Last Blood beyond the violence and the casual racism and exploitation of female characters to advance the plot of a rampaging Rambo. The final nail in the coffin is that along the way the whole thing begins to plod and not even a copious amount of graphic headshots in the aforementioned tunnels of horror can make it better. As a boring, lowest-denominator, and frankly insulting action film, let it be said that there are far better ways to spend your money and time than watching this masterpiece of poor filmmaking. Skip it. (Rose F.)