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How ‘Rambo’ Went From an Anti-War Book to This Current Movie Mess
‘Rambo: Last Blood’ is the fifth film in a series that even the character’s creator is now embarrassed by
The Rambo franchise has long been synonymous with gratuitous violence and spectacular explosions. On that score, Rambo: Last Blood, the latest film in the series, delivers.
Last Blood revels in all the machismo and racism that have become the series’ signature. A standard-issue, fiendish Mexican gang kidnaps an innocent, young girl for the express purpose of providing the aging hero, played by Sylvester Stallone, a pretext for righteous, hyperbolic carnage. (Oh, right: Here’s a warning that there are spoilers ahead.) In the movie’s climax, Rambo shoots, stabs, and explodes his way through truckloads of interchangeable, evil brown people before pinning the main villain to the wall with arrows and literally cutting out his still-beating heart. The small audience at the opening-night show I attended cheered and laughed in disbelief — just as the filmmakers no doubt intended.
Rambo may now mean gore and giggling, but the original source material was very different. David Morrell’s 1972 novel First Blood was meant as a cautionary tale. His original intention was to write a book “that shoved the brutality of the war…
