Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Paz Vega, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Adriana Barraza, Yvette Monreal, Joaquin Cosio, Jessica Madsen, Oscar Jaenada, Fenessa Pineda, Marco de la O, Alvaro Flores, Ursula Murayama, Cathy Pulido, Tick Zingale, Manuel Uriza.

Old soldiers never die, they just find ways to keep fighting the same war but with a different approach, and with a new enemy’s face staring back at them. The same could be said of film franchises that go beyond the expected limit of the three-fold act, they hold all the right weapons in their hands, they have access to the warrior like plans and blueprints that made them so successful in their dawn raids on the viewer’s subconscious. Ultimately it becomes the same old conflict, the same casualties…unless they change the narrative just enough to alter the perspective of the struggle of the lead actor and their feud with the theatrical psyche they embody.

Old soldiers never die, and so perhaps if the audience had been treated Slyvester Stallone’s iconic Rambo not being involved in cinematic wars that were more to do with the political ideology of the 1980s and the coupe de grace envisioned by a gung-ho President, and instead gone from the original film based on the 1972 novel by David Morell, and through to the fourth and fifth instalments without the need to be seen by many as western propaganda, then the understanding of how veterans of wars have been let down by politicians, leaders, and the public alike would have more meaning.

If the viewer takes out the innocuous second film, and the up front in your face American world policeman trope that is riddled and weaved into every scene in the third, then Rambo: Last Blood would be considered as more than just one long battle against the changing face of war, and instead would stand out as a perfect example of the struggle against a real scourge of society, and those who continue to profit from human trafficking, sex slavery and brutalism. For it is to what surely should be the final instalment of the franchise that Rambo: Last Blood would have made the franchise complete if it had been produced as a three-act set of films.

British musician Paul Hardcastle wrote in his huge hit of 1985, 19, that “almost 800,000 men were still fighting the Vietnam War” despite having been home for ten years; and that is not including the men and women who fought for their own beliefs in their own country. It is that memory of war, that the fight, rather than peace, predominates the film’s franchise, and it is to Sylvester Stallone’s enormous credit that he instals an incredible amount of trust in the viewer as they see John Rambo fight perhaps his biggest battle yet, one in America’s own back yard and against a Mexican prostitution cartel.

Rambo: Last Blood is gory, of that there is no surprise, but unlike two other films in the five series franchise, it has its deeper meaning, and for that it joins the original in being creatively the finest example of how war itself can be a disease that cripples psychological growth in any person who takes part, and who can be called upon to do a job that no one else wants to complete.

An film that is not an exercise in self-indulgence, one with some real meat to the bones, and one that inhabits the darker side of our acceptance of certain regimes without borders, Rambo: Last Blood is a fitting end to a long running saga.

Ian D. Hall