There’s a finality to the title of the fifth in the Rambo series, suggesting that this is one property that has finally bled out. It’s hard to imagine Stallone (now 73 and looking like a sculpture chiselled from boiled ham) coming back for more after this pitifully threadbare outing.
John Rambo has retired to an isolated ranch. He trains mustangs, eats pancakes for breakfast and potters around in his extensive network of fortified siege tunnels. He also, one suspects, watches a fair amount of Fox News. When his niece announces that she is planning to visit Mexico to meet her estranged father, Rambo sounds an alarm bell. “You don’t know how black a man’s heart can be,” he mutters.
Soon enough, she finds herself imprisoned in a Mexican brothel. In a cross between an extended advert for Trump’s border wall and the Home Alone booby trap sequence, Rambo lures the bad guys over the border for a spot of bloody retribution. It’s cheap and lazy stuff.
