“Rambo: Last Blood” features what’s easily the most violent movie scene of the year. It’s awesome.
Awaiting an ambush near the end of the film, John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) has thoroughly booby-trapped his secluded Arizona ranch — from the tunnels beneath his land to the cavernous barn atop it.
When the baddies arrive, a sequence begins that’s straight out of “Home Alone,” if in that heartwarming Christmas classic, Kevin McCallister had brutally murdered more than 20 people. Decapitations, impalements, explosions and incinerations galore!
That scene alone — which has Stallone cut through a man’s chest with a knife, reach in, grab his heart and glare at it — makes the movie worthwhile. The rest could do without all the talking, emotions and hackneyed backstory.
Our friend Rambo, whom we last saw on screen 11 years ago in, um, “Rambo,” has been living the quiet life in the Southwest, training horses and hanging out with his college-age niece, Gabrielle (Yvette Monreal). When she tells her uncle she wants to go find her estranged father — a jerk who abandoned her — Rambo is none too pleased.
“I want to go to Mexico,” she says. “Why would you want to go there?” he responds incredulously, as if not residing in a border state.
She vamooses anyway, and almost as soon as she arrives, is roofied at a club, kidnapped and forced into prostitution.
When Gabrielle doesn’t return home, Rambo sets off in search of her. There’s not much more to the plot than that. He meets a Mexican journalist (Paz Vega) who tends his wounds, but she’s nothing to long-distance-call home about. And Stallone is Stallone, who is always welcome.
The title would imply that this is the final entry in the five-film Rambo series, as the badass soldier was introduced in 1982’s “First Blood.” But knowing Stallone, it’s probably Rambo’s Final, Final Farewell Tour. See you in 2029!