Rambo: Last Blood

★★✩✩✩

THROUGH four movies – from 1982’s First Blood to 2008’s Rambo – Sylvester Stallone’s John Rambo has been both the United States’ bad conscience and its symbol of moral certitude, all while delivering blood-soaked, blockbuster entertainment.

In his fifth and ostensibly final film, Rambo: Last Blood ,the old guerrilla soldier does the unexpected: He abandons all pretence of politics and goes small-scale, embarking on a simple mission to find a kidnapped family member.

Call it a thematic retreat at one of the most incendiary political moments in living memory. Not for John Rambo the hot-button issues of the Trump era – race, class, immigration, global economics and so on. (Gun control? Fuhgeddaboudit.) The love of a man for his family, as Liam Neeson’s Taken series has proved, is the one thing all viewers can get behind, a safe bet at today’s polarised box-office.

Since the plot is in pretty well-worn territory (Stallone and Matthew Cirulnick wrote the screenplay), Last Blood tries to distinguish itself by pouring on the splatter like no other entry before it. That becomes clear when Rambo begins literally hammering people to death, but you ain’t seen nothing yet. As the baddies invade Rambo’s Arizona compound, director Adrian Grunberg goes for an almost horror-flick level of gore.

Stallone, at 73, still has the granite physique and icy stare to make us believe in his character. But it’s a little disappointing that this iconic soldier is being put out to pasture with such a desultory finale. Did we really come all this way with John Rambo just so he could tell us father knows best? – Rafer Guzman/newsday/tribune News Service