Rambo : Last Blood

Elephant in the room time. Trump fans are going to love Rambo : Last Blood, a film about an American icon taking on the Mexicans. They'll whoop at shots of the border and they'll holler as the man himself dismembers, bisects and decapitates an army of bad guys. All while they totally overlook the fact that the man himself has always had nothing but contempt for the land he now calls home again. In 2019 it's a tough call to ignore the politics of this movie and this will put off a lot of people even though the movie was written long before the orange tinted gobshite came to power. If however you just want a vicariously bloody thrill you won't go wrong here because my god it's violent.

John Rambo (Stallone) has finally found some kind of peace on a farm in Arizona. He lives there with his niece Gabrielle (Yvette Monreal) and her grandmother Maria (Adriana Barraza) while raising horses out on the llano. Gabrielle travels south of the border in an attempt to reunite with her father and runs into trouble fast. Once again John is forced to return to bullet and blade to make things right.

In 1987 Michael Ryan shot and killed 16 people in Hungerford. Films once again became the scapegoat and in the aftermath the British Board Of Film Classification waged a war on screen violence and films were regularly shredded to soften them for mass consumption. One such film was Rambo III which was shorn of over 3 minutes of bloodletting. If Last Blood had been released back then every reel of footage would have been police escorted back to the airport and out of the country. It's gory action at it's most jaw dropping. It's the ultra-violent love child of Taken and Home Alone. If you've seen these you'll know exactly how things are going to play out. Except there's a lot more pierced craniums this time. There's more than a whiff of Unforgiven in here too. A man born of violence forced to return to what he does best. One beautifully framed shot of John under a tree will bring you right back to that western classic. The clash of genres feels satisfying too. Rambo's back on horseback again and it ties what feels like a series outlier back to part III.

A slow moving (but not boring) start puts the movie's pieces into place. Rambo's been in our lives for 38 years now but this is the first time he's not been alone. It's heartening to see the craggy ol' guy smiling and enjoying himself. Family suits him. His smile would give you a lift. Who the hell ever expected to see a selfie stick in a Rambo movie? Then it all goes to hell when the story moves to Mexico and criminals enter the picture. These guys are the worst, capable of stuff that will make your skin crawl until you demand a biblical awakening for them. From here on the film hits every beat you expect but does it in such a blistering fashion that you'll barely have enough time to think. Don't expect the huge battles of 2008's Rambo here. This time director Adrian Grunberg stages the carnage on a more intimate scale. The horror is close up and there's loads of it. If you are any bit squeamish you need to avoid this like the plague.

Sylvester Stallone has embraced nostalgia in the last decade with the Expendables series and the return of a certain Mr Balboa. He's an actor who knows his limitations and as such relies on audience goodwill and the shorthand he's built up with his longterm fans. John Rambo was never the most verbose character and at times it's been hard to warm to him but when you see him old and crocked and lashing down the medication you'll empathise with him for the first time since 1981's First Blood. This combined with the film's suggestive title add a tension to proceedings that's been lacking in the last 3 installments of the series. Could one of cinema's most enduring faces finally kick the bucket?

In cinemas everywhere from today.