I Watch Films: Rambo: Last Blood

 

Rambo: Last Blood

After defeating America’s greatest enemies in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Burma and the police force of a town in the Pacific North West of the US, John Rambo has retired to his family ranch in Arizona. He raises horses, digs tunnels*, and is surrogate father to Gabriela, the granddaughter of his housekeeper/ ranch manager/only friend Maria. Gabriela is going away to college; feeling over protective Rambo suggests they hold the graduation party in his tunnels. Later Gabriela gets a message from an old friend Gizelle that she’s found Gabriela’s father in Mexico. Both Maria and Rambo tell her not to go – he’s bad news – but she goes.

After a bad experience meeting him, she goes to a club with Gizelle, is drugged and kidnapped by members of a Mexican cartel. Rambo follows her across the border, interrogates the father and Gizelle, forces Gizelle to take him to the club where he confronts enforcer El Flaco. This goes badly; El Flaco leads him to an ambush where he’s beaten, has his wallet with his ID and address and a picture of Gabriela taken. Victor and Hugo Martinez, the bosses, vow to punish Gabriela, which they do by addicting her to heroin and trafficking her into sex work. Rambo is picked up by crusading journalist Carmen Delgado, who nurses him back to health, also unnecessarily explains some of what’s going on.

Recovered Rambo raids the brothel Gabriela is in, rescues her. Driving back to America he tells her she gave him hope, following which she dies. He sends Maria away (also the horses) and turns the ranch into a giant death trap. Going back to Mexico he insists Carmen tell him how to find Victor. Despite her misgivings, she agrees, as nothing else has worked. He raids Victor's house and cuts off his head. In return Hugo leads all his enforcers across the border to attack Rambo’s ranch in a big final setpiece. After Rambo kills them all he gives a slightly confused speech, partly because of the incoherence of trying to sum this up, partly because some earlier scenes apparently got cut.

Seeing the Rambo series as a whole, it becomes clear that it moves from asking questions about the cost of war, and what happens when it comes home, to embracing right-wing American concerns** and becoming a series of revenge films. Rambo doesn’t want to fight a war, he just finds himself in a place where there’s violence and escalates it. Using, of course, the tactics of the people he fought against in Vietnam.

Watch This: Violent thriller brings a close to the Rambo series
Don’t Watch This: Gruesome vengeance, confused politics, doesn’t actually close the series as apparently they’re making a prequel

* Of course he digs tunnels, filling them with supplies and weapons. This is the remnants of the interesting part of the Rambo franchise; that firstly he can’t leave war behind (he’s suffering from PTSD); and secondly that Rambo uses the guerilla tactics of the Viet Cong against his enemies.

** The false idea that the Missing In Action US soldiers in Vietnam are being held prisoner rather than dying and their bodies not recovered or not identified; the over exaggerated idea that Vietnam veterans were ostracised; the idea that there was a lack of support for Mujahadeen resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; the rather confused idea that the Karen people in Burma are being massacred for their Christian beliefs (not universal amongst them); and of course the simplistic assumptions about the lawlessness of the US border with Mexico.