Rambo: Last Blood ★★½

WHAT happened to John Rambo?

Originally, in author David Morrell’s 1972 novel First Blood, he was a shell-shocked Vietnam War veteran who just wanted to be left alone but was pushed into lashing out and violent defensive reaction to the provocations of a small-town police force.

The 1982 film First Blood upped the ante in terms of action but still presented Rambo as mis-understood and potentially controllable, in that instance by his former commanding officer.

But 36 years and four films later, the crazed, disfigured lunatic that wields a huge ‘Wolf Creek’ style knife in sections of Rambo: Last Blood would frighten the hell out of most cinema serial killers.

What happened to Rambo is Sylvester Stallone.

It’s as if the star and driving force behind the franchise so resented not having creating the character in the first place he has spent most of his career re-inventing it.

Stallone, as a controlling influence of the script-writing team, has taken Rambo from evading capture in small-town America to winning a return bout in Vietnam (Rambo: First Blood II in 1985), driving the Communists out of Afghanistan (Rambo III in 1988), battling tyranny in Burma (Rambo in 2008) and now destroying a Mexican drug cartel.

Unlike Stallone’s other great creation, Rocky Balboa, along his journey John Rambo has lost nearly all traces of reserve or subtlety.

Last Blood, for example, spends 30 minutes presenting Rambo as a tortured but gentle soul before flicking the switch from shell-shocked to unstoppable killing machine who cuts his enemies’ hearts out while they are still alive.

Perhaps I’m being a little harsh. There are some good scenes early, particularly between Stallone and Yvette Monreal who plays his niece, Gabrielle, before she is kidnapped and used as a sex slave by the Mexican drug gang led by the eye-rolling, evil Martinez brothers.

Ther’s no doubt director Adrian Grunberg knows his way around an action sequence. This is his second feature at the helm, the other being Mel Gibson’s Get The Gringo in 2012, after serving as an assistant on films like Jack Reacher, Apocalypto, Man on Fire, and Master and Commander.

The final confrontation on Rambo’s family ranch is particularly strong, although I struggle with the fact that only 20-odd stunt people are listed in the film’s credits along with the usual thousands of visual effects crew. Incidentally, I gather for financing and tax purposes, Spain doubles for American’s mid-west and suburban Bulgaria for Mexico.