By George Haerle

For Grays Harbor News Group

While “Rambo: Last Blood” is very aware of its own B-movie quality and grindhouse-level violence, it somehow manages to flounder in its own genre to the point that it is hard to call it anything resembling a success.

Sure, the last 30 minutes is over-the-top and laden with gory violence pulled right out of an “Itchy and Scratchy” cartoon. But it doesn’t come close to topping the much more fun “Rambo” that came before it, nor is it anywhere near as enjoyable as the cheesy “First Blood: Part II” or even slightly as thrilling as the original “First Blood.” I don’t know about you, but I call that three big strikes.

The plot is simple: An aged John Rambo’s daughter figure goes to Mexico and gets kidnapped by the cartel, so Rambo must stab and shoot his way through goons to save her.

What’s a bit different this time around, and an interesting new look at the character, is that John’s character starts out this film in a peaceful state of mind. He’s moved on from his previous life of violence, and runs a small farm in Arizona where he cares for his niece and her aunt. He is still haunted at times by the Vietnam War, though, and has gophered out a network of tunnels beneath his homestead as a widespread bug-out shelter/retreat.

While this would have been a great concept to linger on just a bit longer, the film bungles the next 45 minutes into a grim, badly acted slog even for the film’s trim 89-minute total run time. By the time it’s over, you don’t really care about those interesting first 15 minutes anymore, which feels like a waste of a fresh new direction for the character.

Stallone has never been a weak point even in the more lacking “Rambo” films; the problem is that everything else about this film is subpar. The script is awful, without a single memorable line — even in the cheesy sense. This is a huge detriment, as Stallone’s dialogue is a composite of most of his lines from the previous films, even if he has the rage-filled ghoulish demeanor to pull it off.

On top of that, Yvette Monreal, who plays Rambo’s niece Gabriella, is downright awful. Though she’s supposed to be the emotional center of the film, capturing the audience’s concern for her safety, her acting is so bad and the script treats her character so stupidly that Gabriella is downright unbelievable as a character. Her suffering at the hands of the cartel is pretty bad visually, but the character is so hollow that it becomes impossible to sympathize with her. She’s literally just a plot device.

The villains are a couple of gang-banger brothers who run their cartel with sadistic brutality and participate in drugs, sex trafficking and murder; yet the film still makes them incredibly forgettable, cookie-cutter bad guys. “Savages” by Oliver Stone portrayed cartel lords far more effectively and interestingly, casting Benicio del Toro as a drug-lord enforcer who was so nasty in his methods you couldn’t forget him. Why couldn’t we have gotten a villain like that, to make his demise all that more satisfying?

If there is one thing that makes the movie worth viewing, it’s the final 30 minutes. Cartel scumbags get blasted, cut to pieces, decapitated, shot repeatedly, and impaled left and right to an extreme that is almost Looney Tunes levels of comical. And the dispatch of the final bad guy at Rambo’s hands is, without a doubt, the most unintentionally hilarious gross-out death I have ever seen on film. It left me laughing hysterically.

“Rambo: Last Blood” could have been full of B-grade action movie greatness like its immediate precursor, or even revisited the tense action-thriller tone of the original. But the gladiator levels of violence in what a friend jokingly called “the best slasher film this year” fail to leave a lasting impression.

In short, this would have been a better $2 rental than a $9 ticket.

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“Rambo: Last Blood” is currently playing at the Riverside Cinemas, 1017 S. Boone St. in Aberdeen.

George Haerle holds a bachelor’s degree in creative writing for media and lives in Cosmopolis.

Yana Blajeva | Lionsgate Sylvester Stallone reprises his role as John Rambo in “Rambo: Last Blood.”

Yana Blajeva | Lionsgate Adriana Barraza as Maria Beltran and Sylvester Stallone as John Rambo in “Rambo: Last Blood.”

Yana Blajeva | Lionsgate Sylvester Stallone reprises his role as John Rambo in “Rambo: Last Blood.”