j* Movie Reviews 2019

Rambo: Last Blood (2019)

Old man fights to protect young girl: hyper-traditionalist motivations here.

There are a lot of action-acting heroes I'd follow anywhere; Brucey, Arnie, Chuck Norris, Keanu, Dwayne, Momoa... you get the idea... but Stallone isn't one of them.

In a world where we see increasingly complex perspectives shown in film, and larger and larger teamworks of characters, this is definitely oldschool. One man. One lone old man. One lone, old, war veteran of a man who has seen some things. And now he rides horses, spinny, spinny horses. And digs tunnels. Because he likes to dig and is a little bit crazy.

There's some stuff about his orphaned niece wanting to find her estranged father. There's some stuff about "being a father" and how Rambo is more her father than her father. Girl goes to Mexico, gets drugged, abducted, and sex enslaved. These are real problems for sure. But the way this was only played from the perspective of the male father figure really bugged me. Particularly them making a point of discussing her virginity several times before the point of forced prostitution. Anyway, Rambo attempts a rescue, it doesn't go exactly as he might have hoped. There's an eye for an eye and then more eye for an eye and then the whole world goes blind in his weaponised tunnels.

There's nowhere near as much action as I had expected, it being largely contained to several sequences. It's long and slow between those bits.

J* gives it 2 stars.