Rambo: Last Blood
Written By: Joe Black
An Unnecessarily In-Depth Analysis Of An Already Forgotten End To A Classic Franchise
I’ve heard some people claim Rambo is pro-Trump. It concerns me that this is an issue for people now, and yet a filmmaker like Craig S. Zahler is certified fresh every time he makes a movie and his films are so clearly racist and full of hatred. But suddenly here comes Rambo and it gets slapped with this label? Well, I think that’s absurd. Here’s my take… (major spoilers ahead. Like, the whole entire movie)
So you’ve got Rambo at the beginning living the supposed American dream. Literally riding a horse on his Arizona farm wearing a cowboy hat. A cowboy’s dream/ideal Americana. But there’s a twist. Instead of a wife and child he has some estranged Mexican friend who is aunt to a young Mexican girl, and they are both in his care. This is Rambo’s revisionist “American dream” after a lifetime of service to and for his country. A lifetime drenched in the blood of “foreigners” wanting to invade our land and our freedoms. So already it’s interesting that we’ve got him living harmoniously with two Mexicans. Women no less. How “un-Rambo” of him.
Ok, so Rambo has an ideal life, and yet his PTSD and paranoia are at an all time high. He’s literally built tunnels for safety and security under his farm. It’s all Americana above ground, but underneath there’s a stock pile of fear and danger. He stores weapons - hell he even makes weapons. So there’s still some kind of angry wound in him. He’s got the dream, but he’ll never shake the horror and fear? Ok cool, so we’re on a roll here with some interesting shit…
Now, plot begins, and the young Mexican girl is going to college. She has no idea what she wants to be/do but she’s being forced to embrace this American academic culture, right? cool. she does her best to assimilate to white culture - to her school friends and such. How does she do this? Well, Rambo offers to let them hang in his scary bunker full of weapons. So we’ve got these white bread kids who’s curiosity is peaked by this literal manifestation of her surrogate father Rambo’s war driven paranoia. It’s a perfect metaphor for the climate we’re all living in right now. During this party they play modern rap music. Rambo himself - as he sits in his rocking chair on his porch listening to the music - says “I could get used to that.” This open minded Rambo is something we’ve never seen before, and at the very least it’s a characteristic that we’ve never identified with Rambo. Culturally adventurous, open minded, care giving and melancholy. Here’s a man so out of touch, that he makes a letter opener for his surrogate Mexican daughter as a going to college present. But is he really out of touch? Or is the letter opener just an excuse to give her a bladed weapon she may need to defend herself in college. Is he unknowingly passing his paranoia and traumas onto this girl?!?!?! Whoooooaaaa… K now this is really getting interesting.
Come to find out, the Mexican girl’s father abandoned her, and a friend of her’s in Mexico has found him! So now we know that all of these things she can’t get a grasp on - who she is, what she wants to do with her life - all stem from not understanding why her father chose to abandon her. Yes she has Rambo, but her father is her father, and the scar of that cuts deep. If this isn’t a brilliant and blatant metaphor for all millennial trauma and fear, then I don’t know what is. No matter our race, we feel like older generations didn’t teach us, guide us or provide us with what we needed to succeed. They “abandoned us” for their own pleasure and comfort and safety. I mean, that’s what we spend most of our time on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram doing! We’re expressing our anger at the “selfishness” of previous generations that have put us in a terrible position. Right? K…
So the Mexican girl wants to go confront her real father and get answers. She’s gonna go into Mexico to do this. She feels she has to do this before she leaves the farm for the real world. Now for Rambo that’s a tough pill to swallow. Here he’s spent the last decade of his life taking care of her, teaching her, guiding her, and it’s still not enough. He’s hurt by the fact that she’s willing to risk her life to get answers because what he provides can’t fill that void for her. He’s given her everything and apparently it isn’t enough. Does he hold that against her? No. Does he get angry? No. Does he tell her she’s wrong? No. All he does is ask her to trust herself to be patient. To see a bit of the world and learn somethings for herself before deciding if her real father actually has anything to offer her. In fact, it’s her Mexican aunt who is upset. Her aunt hates her scumbag of a father, and when she learns the girl wants to go to Mexico to find him she’s lashes out in a fit of rage. It’s in this scene that Rambo acts as a FUCKING MEDIATOR! He’s the neutral in this scenario trying to de-escalate it. JOHN RAMBO acts as a peacekeeper through non violent communication?!?!?! Now THAT’S FUCKING INTERESTING!!!!!
So the girl lies about going to a friends house and instead drives to Mexico where she meets with her friend. Her friend is living in a dangerous area. (she left America to go back to her roots and is now impoverished and in a bad way.) Obviously we know what’s coming, but Rambo’s surrogate daughter is either none the wiser and/or hoping she’s not being deceived. The movie is very good at keeping her level of intelligence and perception vague.
Ok, so the friend takes the girl to her dad’s apartment. When we meet the father, he’s not some alcohol guzzling creep. He’s not some sweaty monster with a scowl. No. In fact, he looks like the most average dude on the planet. A total white washed yuppie suburban dad. He very bluntly states he never loved her mother, never wanted her, and didn’t care when he left. The end. Door shuts and the girl is all alone with the answers she secretly knew deep down but truly didn’t want to confirm. Her friend tells her “come clubbing with me. You’re in no shape to drive right now!” At the club the girl is drugged and kidnapped and sold into sex slavery. Of course she is. I mean, after all, it is a Rambo movie.
So Rambo back at the Arizona farm finds out she’s kidnapped. He gets a knife and a gun, hops in his pick up truck and bee-lines for the border. In Mexico, he goes to the girl’s fathers house. He’s pissed, man. He threatens the guy, he wants to kill him so bad because he’s such a piece of shit… but it’s uselesss. Sure, she may have come to Mexico to find him so in a way it IS his fault she got kidnapped, but… I mean, the father was upfront with her. He didn’t lie or mix words or manipulate her. And he’s no help to Rambo because he has NO IDEA what happened to the girl.
It’s at this point that there’s a total shift in Rambo. He goes right back to the old Rambo we know. Foul mouthed, violent, angry. When he meets his “daughter’s” treacherous friend, he repeatedly threatens to murder the girl violently if she doesn’t help him. When he finds the pimp who drugged and sold her into slavery, he inflicts what is possibly the most violent act I’ve ever seen in a movie on the man to get information out of him. The pimp gives Rambo directions to the house where the sex traffickers live. BUT! As Rambo is torturing the pimp for information, a curious Mexican female reporter watches and then follows Rambo to the bad guys’ house.
Sticking true to his old cowboy ways, Rambo decides to just storm the gates. But in this age of cellphones, word travels faster than feet. One guy sees him approaching, contacts another guy and so on and so on. By the time Rambo makes it to the front door, he’s surrounded by an army of Mexican gang members. They BEAT THE EVER-LOVING SHIT out of Rambo. They damn near cripple the fool. The two gang leaders- brothers who basically run the city with fear and violence - then cut a V into his face to teach him a lesson. They explain to Rambo that to them, his “daughter” was nothing, and they’d only planned to use her until she was useless. But since he tried to steal her back, they’re going to make an example out of her. Rambo’s old school, reactionary cowboy hoo-ha that he’s so gloriously known for, has sealed this poor girls fate. The movie is showing us that it’s not Rambo’s world anymore. That his old ways are not useful and have only lead to more harm.
Left for dead, the female reporter finds him, takes him to her place and calls a secret doctor to come by and fix him up. What really impressed me with this movie is that other than the blood-bath finale, we spend WAY more time with loving, caring, community building Mexicans than we do with drug dealers, gangsters and pimps. Anyways, so a few days later, Rambo wakes up and asks the reporter why she helped him. She explains her sister was also sold into slavery, and died from an overdose. She’s been trying to write a story to expose these guys because the police are in their pockets and blah blah blah. Pretty standard revenge/thriller “Death Wish” kinda shit. It’s a cliche, but it works. SO, Rambo says that’s all well-and-good but he has to get his “daughter” now or die trying. In fact, it’s in this scene specifically where the reporter asks him “Is she your daughter” and Rambo flat out says “Yes.” Fucking beautiful. Now, this reporter has taken her time to truly understand the mechanics of the criminals. She’s been patient and smart, getting a full understanding of what’s going on before taking action. This is a beautiful juxtaposition to the bullshit “guns blazing” mentality of the previous Rambo films. Because of this reporter’s tireless but calculated efforts, she knows where his “daughter” is ACTUALLY being kept. Not at the gang leader’s home, but at a shitty motel in town.
Now, armed with a hammer, Rambo goes to the hotel. No bullshit this time, he goes in swinging and brutally murders every man in the small building. Now this scene is really fascinating for a couple of reasons.
1: this is decidedly NOT an action scene. It is a merciless, painful, horrific scene of violence. There’s not an ounce of “fun” or even “vindication” about it. It’s brutal. This is not your typical Rambo shit.
2: Rambo breaks into every room and kills the man inside. In every room there is also an underaged prostitute. After he kills each man he screams to the prostitute in the room “RUN!” And EVERY SINGLE PROSTITUTE says “No! I can’t! They’ll find me and kill me!” I find this to be mind blowingly effective. This works dramatically in obvious ways, and thematically in a couple of really ingenious ways. Thematically in relation to the real world, it’s about the life long fear that trauma inflicts on us in our youth. The unshakable effects of the horrors and wrongs that are put upon us - especially sexual trauma for young women. Ever think you’d see a theme like THAT in a Rambo movie? Me neither. Another way it works thematically is for the average Rambo fan and or for the typical “red blooded American.” While your ways may be solutions, and while your methods are dangerous and you’re brave and courageous for acting when others are helpless, the “job” isn’t finished there. Life stills goes on after the action you take. And this Rambo movie chooses to shed a light on this. Super cool.
So in the last room (of course) Rambo finds his “daughter.” Her face has been carved up, and her arms are covered in track marks. She’s near death. He takes her, loads her into his pick up truck and bee-lines for the border. As he drives, he tries to keep his “daughter” awake. She tells him she’s sorry and that he was right. He tells her “You have nothing to be sorry about. You deserved answers. It’s not your fault that your innocence, your hope and your dreams were taken from you before you could even figure out what they were.” Then the scene gets REEEEEAAAAAALLLLLLYYYY interesting. John Rambo - the symbol of violent, Reagan era xenophobia - tells this little Mexican girl, “When I met you and your mother, it changed my life…” He explains how after all the violence that he had experienced and inflicted, that the one place he never thought he would find what had been missing from his life all along, he would find in “foreigners.” Now remember, he’s saying all this to keep his “daughter” awake so that she doesn’t fall asleep and die from all the drugs in her system.
We find out that Rambo did not have a romance with the girl’s mother. No. It’s not any classic, stupid Hollywood bullshit like that. Apparently Rambo simply admired the girl’s mother. He admired her strength and her love for her daughter. He admired that they stood up for themselves and made lives for themselves by sticking together as a family. HE explains that he latched onto them because they stood for everything he had forgotten in war and violence and hatred. That their love for each other inspired him to come out of the trauma in his life.
Now, this might sound like appropriation or white washing or mansplaining or whatever negative connotation you wanna put it in. But to me, this is his way of saying that he was warped by a system into believing the wrong values, and that by being exposed to these Mexican women and their love is what showed him the light again. But, after venting all of this to his “daughter”, Rambo finishes by explaining that the evil in him - the violence - never went away, and that he’s always been afraid it would come back. They take this moment in the film to make sure we understand that he’s not “miraculously healed” or vindicated or whatever… No, they make damn sure we know that he’s still fucked up. And why? Because he found his answers, his hope, his ideals in someone else, and not in himself. And finding things in yourself is the only way to find true peace. The fact that the 5th film in the Rambo franchise takes the time to explore this theme at the dramatic peak of the film, goddmaned near made me cry.
Unfortunately, Rambo can’t keep his “daughter” awake, and she dies in his truck… That’s right. Rambo 5 - the final action movie of the 2019 summer season - builds to a crescendo where he FAILS his mission. Most of these exploitation revenge, rape movies start with an innocent being destroyed. The wife is murdered. The daughter is brutally raped or drugged or murdered or all 3 yadayadayada… Not Rambo though. It CRESCENDOS in failure. The girl’s death is the end of act2! Not the inciting fucking incident in act 1! This is not a revenge film. No. This movie very clearly has something else on its mind. A purpose. A prospect for the future of our country… So, with his surrogate Mexican daughter dead, Rambo slams on the gas and bursts right through the 2 strips of barbed wire that act as a border fence between Mexico and the US. (Okay, so some people have used this beat as a way to fuel this idea that this is some kinda “pro-Trump” “pro-wall” kinda movie. We’ll get back to this in a minute, I assure you.)
Back at the farm, Rambo tells the girl’s aunt what has happened. She’s distraught. They bury the girl under a tree next to her mother where we’re given a final image for her of a home-made crucifix signed by all of her friends. Rambo then tells her aunt that he’s getting rid of the farm. We now finally get the idea that for Rambo, this “American dream home/scenario” was never real to him. He created it in his best effort to provide his “daughter” with the best chance possible to make it in this country. In this scene, Rambo finally admits to himself that this picturesque American dream was never real to him. He was just doing what he was supposed to. Now this is kinda one of the deepest parts of the movie…
No one likes to admit when they’re wrong. It’s the toughest thing in the world to do sometimes. So how do we counter act the shame we feel when we know something we’ve loved or believed in turns out to be a lie? More often than not, we deny the truth that we now know. We’re afraid of how embarrassed we would be if we’re wrong. We’re afraid of the judgement and ridicule. We’re afraid that no one will ever take us seriously again, or trust us, etc. We’re afraid of how others will treat us. We overcompensate by doubling down on our belief - willful ignorance it’s called - because we can’t handle the shame of being wrong, and the fear of the unknown future. And Rambo - right before our very eyes - finally admits that to himself at this point in the movie. America has evolved past Reagan. Past Nixon. Past the glory days of the WW2 victory and going to the fucking moon. Times have changed. What was picturesque even as little as 50 years ago, we now know to be unrealistic and unfulfilling. We now know the world is bigger than just us and the things that we want for our own lives. It’s a tough place for us to be. ALL OF US. Young, old, every race, every gender, etc. WE are all like Rambo, facing an unknown. The bravest act Rambo commits in this film is not barreling into Mexico in his truck, knives out, guns blazing and hammer swinging. No. It’s admitting to himself he’s been trying to buy into something he’s felt/known to be a lie for a long time…
Now we get to the climax.
Rambo goes back to Mexico and gets the female reporter to join with him. He calls her out! He tells her she’s past the point of figuring out and understanding, and has crossed over to a point where she’s just making excuses for not actually taking action in her life because she’s so afraid of what might happen knowing what she now knows. He basically makes a deal with her - That he’ll give everything he has left in him to make things right, if she’ll do the same. He’ll risk everything of himself if she’ll do the same. She accepts. So dope.
So he sneaks into the bad guy pimp brothers’ house in the middle of the night and takes out a shit ton of gang members, including ONE OF THE BROTHERS! He cuts the fucker’s head off (a very on the nose metaphor that works like a charm.) We as a people still respond to symbols - flags, politicians, logos, etc. That’s why the media is so powerful an influence. We “need” symbols to understand what/how to feel. Rambo knows that better than anybody. He himself fell so hard for the symbols of Americana that he literally tried to recreate it with his little farm in Arizona to pacify himself. These pimp/drug dealing gang leader brothers? They’re a symbol themselves. The people of the town see them as gods who cannot bleed. That’s how they maintain their power. So Rambo makes this big bold gesture by killing everyone at the house and chopping off the one brother’s head. He then has the female reporter use her media connections to get news coverage of the slaughter to publicly humiliate the remaining brother and his gang members - taking their power over the city away from them. But! Rambo also knows that this will get a reaction out of the remaining brother. He knows that the remaining brother will now come for Rambo - which is just what Rambo wants.
See, Rambo has learned. Before leaving for Mexico he booby trapped his farm - the house, barn, tunnels, etc. Instead of being reactionary, he prepared himself before taking action. Now, this might seem a little hypocritical to what I’ve been saying in this whole analysis. I’m talking about peace and understanding, and now I’m saying Rambo has “learned” because he took the time to set traps before going into battle. I get where that might be confusing. But! Here’s the thing… When Rambo is getting the female reporter to help him, he tells her that he knows that even though he’s learned what he’s learned and come as far as he’s come, he’s too far gone to have the life that he now understands he wanted all along. He’s too far gone, too far removed to be able to NOT take action. That’s his place in life. And now with this final battle, no one is in harm’s way but him. Storming the gates before got his “daughter” killed. He risked her life with his gung-ho ways. Well, it’s painful to say, but now that she’s dead, that’s not an issue anymore. There is no chance of collateral damage for Rambo anymore. This is personal. And while I personally don’t condone violence, I do condone action without “collateral damage.”
So the evil brother gang leader guy gets the rest of his gang together and they head for the American border with a full-blown arsenal. Now, remember when I said the barbed wire fence Trump stuff was gonna come up again? Well here it is. When the brother and his gang show up to the border, they show up to a portion OF THE COMPLETED WALL. Yup, Trump’s wall in all of its glory. There it is. It ain’t no barbed wire tinsel fence. No. It’s that big bad wall Trump sold a whole nation on. When the bad guys come to the wall, without skipping a beat, they literally just walk through a tunnel underneath, paying the wall no goddamned mind!
HAHAHAHA!!!
All that set up to show how stupid and superfluous this wall business is! The newest Rambo movie not only took time to address the wall issue, but also took the time to set it up earlier with the barbed wire! They baited the Trump supporters! They’ve got every “trumper” in the audience watching Rambo drive his truck through that barbed wire and thinking to themselves, “Yup! That’s how easy it is to get in. That’s why we need Trumps wall!” Only to pull the rug out from under them later by showing how the wall is equally useless and stupid. This scene comes DIRECTLY after the scenes explaining the nature of symbols, and the power they have to help the powerful maintain their oppression over an entire populous. THIS IS NOT A COINCIDENCE OR AN ACCIDENT FOLKS! THIS IS REAL FILMMAKING!!! Trumps wall is a symbol. Nothing more. And this movie debunks the idea of symbol right before showing us how useless the wall ACTUALLY is. How is this not something for liberal Hollywood to fucking orgasm over?! Folks, the new RAMBO movie is on your (liberal leaning) side on the issue of immigration and xenophobia! This is REAL progress!
“But JOE!” You say “That theory is debunked because that scene is immediately followed by Rambo slaughtering Mexicans for entertainment!” Well, here’s how/why I disagree… The violence in the showdown? It’s violence. It’s NOT action. It’s not cool. It’s not fun. We don’t stop and relish, savor or revel in this bloodshed. No. It is swift, it is scary, it is ugly, it is mean. Rambo blows bodies to bits AFTER they’re already fucking dead. We’re not cheering with Rambo. We’re afraid of him. The character himself HATES what he’s doing. He hates this side of himself. He knows he has no real use for it other than his own selfish feelings and wants. He even says to the leader “I coulda killed you 10 times already, but I wanted to savor it. I want you to see me rip your fucking heart out (which he does in fact do) so you understand what you’ve done to me.” This has nothing to do with Mexicans. This has nothing to do with America. This has nothing to do with justice or vengeance. This is action is about personal revenge. And it’s ugly and sad and painful and evil. And Rambo knows it. He’s FAILED yet again…
These men didn’t come to America to start some shit. Rambo lured them here for a trap. This isn’t pro-Trump, anti immigration, racist or xenophobic. This is a personal atrocity that has been committed.
The last act of the film sees Rambo literally blow up the farm. He blows up the whole land, including the tunnels underneath. Rambo destroys the symbol. The Mexicans didn’t do that. He did. HE had to… With all the gang members dead, a bullet ridden/dying Rambo sits on what’s left of his porch in a rocking chair (the oldest Americana imagery in the book) and through narration he explains, “The things I’ve seen and the things I’ve done have corrupted my brain and my soul. My heart is in the right place, but my mind and my soul are wrong.” I cannot think of a clearer apology. Rambo (or Stallone and the filmmakers) are explaining and acknowledging to an entire generation - OUR generation - that they now understand why they did the things they did in the past, and how they can see the bad places those decisions have lead to. Rambo is not a hero in this movie. He’s not a white night. He’s not a savior. He’s just a well meaning guy who got lost (or rather corrupted) in his life journey to do the right thing in the face of what we’ve been conditioned to understand as evil.
This movie is not making excuses for people like Rambo or the people who’ve loved/supported him. No, this movie is them apologizing for getting it wrong. And with this beautiful look into the psyche of people and characters like Rambo and all other “patriots,” our generation can now have a better understanding of the good intentions that lie at the root of almost all actions - especially the ones with and outcomes - and we can begin to heal together.
Do I think that 99% of people in the world would watch this movie and get what I got out of it? No. But I just articulated it, so IT IS THERE! It is. I’m not saying that makes me smart or deep or whatever… I’m just happy to see a movie this thought-out. This well meaning. This brutally honest. Are there a couple of bad performances? Yes. Is there some bad green screen in the driving scenes? Yes. Is there some clunky dialogue and are there obvious cliches? Yes. Does the movie work? Yes. Was the movie made with good intentions and utilized the tools/language of cinema as well as the resources of Hollywood to promote what I feel to be a beneficial message? Yes.
