Home has always been an abstract concept for John Rambo, which is what the last scene of 2008’s otherwise expendable “Rambo” sequel finally gave the iconic Sylvester Stallone character: a moment wh…
” — another cruel and ugly showcase of xenophobic carnage squeezed into barely 80 minutes and packaged for export — the tired, now-septuagenarian action figure turns his notorious sense of loathe-thy-neighbor vengeance toward the Mexican cartels, who’ve kidnapped his college-bound niece Gabrielle and turned her into a smack-addicted sex slave.
Singlehandedly doing more to support the Second Amendment than Charlton Heston ever has, Rambo movies view weapons the way Quentin Tarantino does feet, turning a well-greased gun barrel into a whatever-cocks-your-bazooka fetish object. To wit, this film’s opening shot dollies past a well-stocked ammunition rack, in which we spy a pair of M16s, a shotgun or two, and several rifles, plus a machete for good measure. So much for background checks. Rambo is clearly waiting for the war to come to him.
Early on, Victor threatens one such escapee, but stops short of punishing her in a scene that feels as if it may have been softened after test screenings — whereas no brutality has been spared against the anonymous platoon of cartel thugs Rambo later decimates. Yes, but they deserve it, one might argue. This is the reductive one-man-against-the-world reasoning by which Rambo has always operated, and I don’t buy it.
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