Rambo: Last Blood Review Round-Up

The fifth installment of Sylvester Stallone‘s Rambo franchise arrives in theaters this weekend in the form of Rambo: Last Blood. Seemingly the final film in the story of John Rambo, the movie see’s Stallone’s titular character living a seemingly peaceful life on a ranch in Arizona. His retirement is interrupted when the Cartel kidnaps his niece and Rambo starts his violent streak once again. Of course, any time an action franchise like this is brought back from the dead (again), fans are going to wonder how it holds up to the other.

Well, on Thursday morning the official reviews of Rambo: Last Blood started trickling out online, and things aren’t looking good for Stallone’s series. In fact, it looks like Rambo has gone in the exact opposite direction as Rocky, a franchise that was rebooted to critical acclaim and financial success with Creed in 2015. The critics cannot stand Last Blood.

There may be one positive note to find here and there, but nearly every single review of Rambo: Last Blood that has been published so far is an absolute nightmare. It seems like this movie took all of the wrong things from the rest of the series and cranked them up to 10, turning a story about a soldier suffering from PTSD to an angry old man with more guns than he knows what to do with.

Here are some excerpts from the scathing collection of reviews:

Frank Scheck – The Hollywood Reporter

“You can tell that far more thought went into that final sequence, admittedly effectively orchestrated by director Adrian Grunberg (Get the Gringo), than the rest of the film combined. But to what end? To show that when Rambo sets his mind to it, he can come up with Rube Goldberg-type contraptions like it’s nobody’s business? The character deserves better, and so does the audience.”

You can read the The Hollywood Reporter’s full review here.

Peter Debruge – Variety

“Rambo — who is bludgeoned till his eyes won’t open, and gashed again on the same cheek that was scarred in First Blood Part II — always sustains some kind of humiliating beatdown before getting his comeuppance. That’s the long-established formula for this franchise. In the past, he’s used military operations to justify his rage. This time it’s personal, or so the cliché goes, although that sentiment has seldom been less convincing (same goes for Stallone’s crocodile tears). Here, it’s the screenwriters, not the cartel, who should be held accountable for conjuring a virginal relative only to violate and degrade her. Suddenly, the infamous wall along the U.S.-Mexico border seems inadequate — less in containing the cartels than in protecting them from Rambo’s brand of vigilante justice.”

You can read Variety’s full review here.

Eric Kohn – IndieWire

“Rambo’s cartoonish action feats may have been riveting in the Reagan years, but these days, they’re just a tiresome slog. Yet nearly 40 years after the comparatively bloodless first installment, the grunting warrior still can’t catch a break, this time taking on hardened Mexican sex traffickers across the border. If only Last Blood had more to say about that beyond the jingoistic mishmash of dime-store sentimentality and half-hearted vengeance it shrugs into existence, bidding farewell to an action icon in the same grotesque terms that made him so problematic in the first place.”

You can read IndieWire’s full review here.

Vince Mancini – Uproxx

“In Rambo: Last Blood, 73-year-old Sylvester Stallone has completed his transition from comely leading man to grievance politics human gargoyle. He’s more jacked than ever and impressively spry, but his face looks like a sewn together flesh mask made from Buffalo Bill’s murder victims. His lower lip juts out at an impossible angle and facial surgeries (one assumes) have pulled his cheek skin so taut that the red goo of the tear duct matrix beneath his eyeballs is constantly exposed to the breeze. If once you had to know that Rambo was a former Green Beret and ‘Nam-era super soldier to believe he was a bad guy’s worst nightmare, now all you have to do now is look at him. He’s legitimately terrifying, the stuff of North Korean propaganda cartoons.”

You can read the full Uproxx review here.

Scott Mendelson – Forbes

“Rambo: Last Blood is a step down from its predecessors. It’s barely a Rambo movie, instead operating as a generic “old man out for a kill” actioner that happens to star a pop culture icon. Beyond a few offhand references to John Rambo’s past, this could be any old Lionsgate Premiere action flick. There is something dispiriting about the once high-and-mighty Rambo franchise essentially copying the action movies that followed in its footsteps. Despite a character-driven first act and some solid acting, it drifts in the wind until its ‘reason for the season’ action climax. Comparatively speaking, if Rambo: First Blood Part II is Air Force One, then Rambo: Last Blood is Firewall.”

You can read Forbes’ full review here.

Witney Seibold – IGN

“Audiences, however (and perhaps bafflingly), latched onto the film’s exhilarating violence and to Rambo’s soldierly efficiency more than to his tragedy, leading First Blood’s subsequent sequels to transform the titular trauma sufferer into a tragedy-free, unstoppable all-American badass killing machine and pop culture’s central symbol for unchallenged American military might. A character who was originally meant to stand as a symbol for the damage that war can do to a soldier is now best remembered as an unkillable human machine gun.”

You can read IGN’s full review here.