“Rambo – Last Blood” ~ a fitting tribute to the glorious solo warrior action series, that started with “First Blood”, which I saw in a theatre in Ramanathapuram, when I was in X standard (grade!). Had been a fan ever since & have watched all the Rambo movies, multiple times.
Alongside “Rocky”, this had been another long running series of one-man-demolition-squad action films helmed by Sylvester ‘Sly’ Stallone, who ruled the Hollywood box office along with Arnold ‘Arnie’ Schwarzenegger in the ’80s & ’90s. Though Arnie too has starred, again, as the venerable Terminator in a recent release “Terminator – Dark Fate”, of the long running Terminator series, Sly had more such series under his massive belt, including “The Expendables” and “Escape Plan.”
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The action heroes of #MeraBharatMahan – especially the younger lot – will do well to learn from these masters of action, by watching their respective series of movies, who practically ruled the genre for decades, especially the ’80s &’90s, and are still around doing what they do best – destroy the bad guys, single-handedly.
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In ‘Rambo – Last Blood’ Sly plays his age. He even has an adopted family, which becomes the cause of him exploding into the relentless action, filled with mayhem, with a generous sprinkling of creative kills. But all of that happens only in the third act, by the end of which, unsurprisingly, Rambo is the only one alive.
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Here, for a change, Rambo has actually settled down in his farmhouse in Arizona and genuinely cares for people – at least two (a grandmother & her grand daughter, who Rambo brings up as his own daughter), horses and even takes medication to keep the lid on the beast within. The adopted daughter goes to Mexico to see her real father (who disowns & disappoints her – something Rambo warns her about), despite Rambo’s caution & grandmother’s chiding. There, she gets betrayed by a friend and ends up in a cartel that’s into drugs and human trafficking.
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Rambo bursts into the scene, gets beaten up pretty badly by the bad guys, gets rescued by some random woman (whose sister too was abducted, abused and killed by the cartel), recovers, finds his adopted daughter, who dies due to the drug overdose (induced by the cartel) and physical abuse, enroute to home. So, Rambo buries her, sends off the grandmother (and horses) to safety, and prepares for war, in his own underground lair (beneath the home).
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He goes to Mexico once again, meets his rescuer, with her help finds and then kills a few cartel henchmen single-handedly (with his trademark knife), which brings the entire cartel to his place in Arizona, baying for blood. But they’ve no idea about the hornet’s nest they are about to disturb. It’s going to sting, hard, and none of them are capable of surviving that.
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And that’s when the mayhem unfolds, in signature Rambo style. He basically kills every single member of the cartel, inside the tunnels under his home, leaving just the villain stranded in the end, to face him one-on-one. The climax is truly the icing on the cake, though in a particularly gruesome way – Rambo basically pins down the cartel head villain with 4 accurately launched arrows from his well known bow (it starred in all the Rambo movies, along with the knife), cuts his chest with his knife, plucks out his heart with his bare hands and actually shows it to the villain before he dies in utter agony. Then he rides off into the sunset, on a horse, no less, alone.
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Is it really ciao for Rambo, whose mere mention will inevitably make the bad guys pee in their pants? One never knows, since he’s still alive and there are plenty of bad guys still around, doing all kinds of evil things, waiting to die a gory death in his hands. Nevertheless, this will certainly be a glorious conclusion to the series that stands out for its unique military style relentless one-man action, where only one man stands in the end, alive, always, with fans still rooting for him all the way. And that man’s name is Rambo… John Rambo!
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Oh btw, if you are the kind of patient fan who waits till the end credits roll, though there are no teasers like the Marvel movies, there’s a fantastic montage of Rambo from all the movies in the series.
~Swamy | @PrakashSwamy
SwamyView 