Director: George P. Cosmatos
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Charles Napier, Steven Berkoff
Have I Seen it Before: Between cable and spending most of the 00s sitting on a couch, I was bound to catch the film by osmosis alone. And that’s not even counting the select scenes that are forever etched into my brain because they were featured in Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990).
Did I Like It: I like First Blood (1982) quite a bit, and I really, really, found Rambo: Last Blood (2019) to be one of the more annoying movies I ever had to sit through in recent years, to the point where I can’t quite account for how Stallone is still able to be a part of good movies.
So, where does this one land? It’s probably the most iconic outing for the character. When you think of Rambo, you’re probably half-remembering some scene from this movie above all others. That counts for something. A movie doesn’t become iconic without some kind of virtue raising that profile. Even The Room (2003) has an watchable quality.
And damned if I didn’t passively enjoy this film. Maybe its the James Cameron story providing the backbone for the script. Maybe it’s just the undeniable visceral (and sometimes filled with viscera) experience of seeing an angry man blow up as many people as possible with some kind of vaguely altruistic reason. I’m along for the ride, no matter how ridiculous it objectively is, and no matter how preposterously removed the character suddenly becomes from his origins*.
But it only lasts so long. After all of the violence is over, and Stallone feels an inexplicable need to drive home the “lesson” of it all, and I’m out. Completely. Matters are not helped even a little bit by the fact that with such treacle filling ones ears, it has to be drilled home even further by a Frank Stallone song… And not even a good one.
*Although, to be fair, not quite as insanely divorced as the animated series Rambo: The Force of Freedom, a subsequent attempt to jam David Morell’s novel into a G.I. Joe clone.