Movie Review: Rambo: Last Blood (2019)

DIRECTOR: Adrian Grunberg. CAST: Sylvester Stallone, Paz Vega, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Adriana Barraza, Yvette Monreal, Genie Kim, Joaquin Cosio, Oscar Jaenada, Pascacio Lopez, Fenessa Pineda, Marco de la O, Rick Zingale, Manuel Uriza, Mirka Prieto, Sheila Shah.
Could this be the last entry in the RAMBO series? I do not know if that is the case, but RAMBO: LAST BLOOD does serve as an appropriate finale. Rambo has found peace at last. He is now kindly Uncle John, managing his late father’s horse ranch with an old friend and her granddaughter, who he considers an adopted niece. His niece sneaks off to Mexico searching for her biological father, but is kidnapped by one of the cartels and forced into a sex trafficking ring. Uncle John drives to Mexico to rescue her, but she dies of a forced overdose on the way back. Rambo then comes out of retirement to avenge his adopted niece and kill as many people as possible. He does exactly that in quite grisly fashion. Rambo’s destruction of the cartel hit men calls back to both FIRST BLOOD and amusingly enough, HOME ALONE. RAMBO: LAST BLOOD is not perfect; it is the shortest film in the series, feeling crudely assembled due to the running time. Fans probably will not complain too much, although it probably ranks second to last overall. I think all there is to do now is a prequel showing us what John Rambo was like before the Vietnam War and prior to PTSD, but I suppose we will see what happens.

Movie Review: Rambo (2008)

DIRECTOR: Sylvester Stallone. CAST: Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz, Paul Schulze, Matthew Marsden, Graham McTavish, Reynaldo Gallegos, Tim Kang, Jake La Botz, Ken Howard, Maung Maung Khin, Supakorn Kitsuwon.

John Rambo takes on the Saffron Revolution in what is arguably the darkest entry in the RAMBO series yet. He now lives in Thailand, catching snakes and providing boat rides for little money. Life is rather boring until a group of American missionaries hire him to provide transport up the Salween River into Burma to provide humanitarian aid to a village in need. Unfortunately, the Burmese junta massacres the village and takes the missionaries prisoner. Now it is up to Rambo to lead a team of mercenaries on a rescue mission in which the body count here is probably the same amount as all three previous movies combined. However, twenty years has passed since the Reagan/Bush era in which the first three RAMBO movies existed. RAMBO’s violence is not of the fun “shoot ‘em up for Ol’ Glory” variety; it is cold, brutal, and more realistic. RAMBO will exceed expectations. Fans will love this dark, nihilistic direction.

Movie Review: Rambo III (1988)

DIRECTOR: Peter MacDonald. CAST: Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Kurtwood Smith, Marc de Jonge, Sasson Gabai, Doudi Shoua, Spiros Forcas, Randy Raney, Marcus Gilbert, Alon Abutbul, Mahmoud Assadollahi, Yosef Shiloah.

This third installment finds John Rambo at peace with himself, living in a Buddhist monastery and taking on locals in stick fights to pay bills. Colonel Trautman visits him and asks that he join in a CIA-sponsored mission to aid anti-Soviet freedom fighters in Afghanistan, but Rambo says no. His war is over…until Russian troops catch Trautman on the Afghan border and imprison him. Rambo comes out of retirement to rescue the colonel and show the mujahideen how to stomp out commie scum the American way. Rambo III was the most expensive action movie ever made at one point ($62 million) and the big budget certainly helps, as it is much more entertaining than First Blood Part II.

Movie Review: Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)

DIRECTOR: George P. Cosmatos. CAST: Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Charles Napier, Steven Berkoff, Julia Nickson, Martin Kove, George Cheung, Voyo Goric. 

RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II dispenses with its predecessor’s nihilistic statements about war veterans and mental health in favor of recreating John Rambo as a beloved Reagan-era shoot-‘em-up action hero. Rambo’s superior Colonel Trautman removes him from a labor camp to send him on a top-secret mission locating POWs still held captive in Vietnam. Corrupt government officials undermine his efforts, leaving him behind in his own personal hell. Rambo then embarks on his own mission to bring our boys home and kill every enemy in sight. Russian mercenaries are also involved in this insidious plot because it is 1985 and President Reagan would not be as big a fan of this movie without a Soviet bad guy. Good brainless fun, but there are other action movies from these years that do a more satisfying job with the one-man army concept.

Movie Review: First Blood (1982)

DIRECTOR: Ted Kotcheff. CAST: Sylvester Stallone, Brian Dennehy, Richard Crenna, Bill McKinney, Jack Starrett, Michael Talbott, Chris Mulkey, John McLiam, Alf Humphreys, David Caruso.
First Blood deserves better than residing in the shadows of its more bombastic sequels. John Rambo is a former Green Beret with PTSD issues that prevent him from fitting in with society after returning from combat. He drifts from town to town looking for his fellow soldiers, only to find that they are all dead. Rambo finally snaps after enduring harassment and abuse from a small-town sheriff and his underlings, escaping to the woods where he brings the Vietnam War home to the redneck cops who have no idea of the things he went through in battle. Loosely based on the book by David Morell, First Blood is a darkly nihilistic story where good guys and bad guys do not exist and the hunters unwittingly become the hunted. All of the following sequels take place in a different context, making First Blood more a part of the series in name only. Director Ted Kotcheff went on to join the staff on Law & Order: SVU where he is a director and executive producer.

Movie Review: The Expendables 3 (2014)

DIRECTOR: Patrick Hughes. CAST: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Antonio Banderas, Jet Li, Wesley Snipes, Dolph Lundgren, Kelsey Grammer, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kellan Lutz, Ronda Rousey, Glen Powell, Victor Ortiz, Robert Davi.

Stallone & company know that all we want with each Expendables movie is more—more of everything that happened in the previous installment and then some. The Expendables 3 certainly does that, although there are times when I wonder if perhaps it delivers too much. Our heroes are in a fight for their lives against the team’s co-founder who has since become one of the world’s most ruthless arms dealers. We see the Expendables become expandable as they recruit an entire new team to help wage their most personal war yet. UFC/WWE star Ronda Rousey has the most presence of the new blood; the rest are generally, well, expendable. Despite the excess, it is still entertaining as hell and would serve as a fitting end to the series had a fourth Expendables movie not been announced. Let’s hope that Carl Weathers shows up in that one.

Movie Review: The Expendables 2 (2012)

DIRECTOR: Simon West. CAST: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nan Yu, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Liam Hemsworth, Scott Adkins, Amanda Ooms, Charisma Carpenter.

The Expendables 2 is possibly the best of the series; it improves on the formula set by the original with more cameos, more violence, and more one-liners. Our boys vow revenge after a rival mercenary murders one of their own during an otherwise simple retrieval mission to Albania. Tons of fun ensues as the good guys fight, stab, shoot, and detonate their way through lots of bad guys to ensure that their fellow Expendable did not die in vain. There is more to the events than that, but it is probably best to keep it simple. Nan Yu does a nice job adding the necessary female role to the team while also temporarily replacing Jet Li as the resident martial arts expert. Anything that might have caused The Expendables to come up short successfully falls into place with this sequel.

Movie Review: The Expendables (2010)

DIRECTOR: Sylvester Stallone. CAST: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, David Zayas, Giselle Itie, Charisma Carpenter, Gary Daniels, Terry Crews, Mickey Rourke.
I love The Expendables series as a fun throwback to ‘80s alpha male action movies appealing to modern audiences. The Expendables introduces us to a group of misfit combat veterans who are clearly unemployable in normal society. They instead find work as mercenaries completing the missions no one else would be crazy or stupid enough to take. One of our heroes goes rogue as the rest take a job flying to the Gulf of Mexico to assassinate a power-hungry military dictator. Things aren’t quite as they seem and the Expendables have to go the extra mile to ensure that all ends well. Cars drive at top speed through narrow streets, things explode, bullets riddle tons of nameless extras, and the good guys defy death in spectacular fashion. You can practically smell the testosterone emanating from the stars’ pores. The Expendables is nothing short of awesome escapist fun.