Sylvester Stallone has been Rocky Balboa and John Rambo to his fans. The latter is back to draw blood for the fifth and final time. Rambo: Last Blood marks the former Vietnam soldier’s return to America, where he will take on a sex-trafficking ring, per reports.
Stallone has co-written the screenplay along with Matt Cirulnick. The movie has been directed by Adrian Grunberg, and will be released on September 20. The cast includes Adriana Barraza, Paz Vega, Yvette Monreal, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Oscar Jaenadam and Joaquin Cosio.
According to the official synopsis, “Rambo must confront his past and unearth his ruthless combat skills to exact revenge in a final mission.” The “deadly journey of vengeance” will mark the end of the franchise, the press note added.
The trailer reveals a ridiculously fit Stallone (he is 72 years old) ruminating about his past (“I have watched people I have loved die”) before deciding to get into familiar one-man army mode when a gang of gunmen attack him on his ranch (“I’ll forgive my enemies when they are beneath the earth”). The action-heavy visuals are set to Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road (I Got The Horses In The Back).
The Rambo franchise was inaugurated with First Blood in 1982. Stallone played a war veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder in the adaptation of David Morrel’s novel. A series of sequels followed, in which Rambo took on Soviet soldiers and the Burmese Army, among others. The movie simply titled Rambo in 2008 was thought to have been the last in the series.
In a master class at the recently concluded Cannes Film Festival, the legendary action hero and filmmaker said that political overtones were falsely attributed to John Rambo, who was seen as a symbol of Ronald Reagan’s muscular America. First Blood was “never by any means meant to be a political statement, but it became one — it took on a life of its own”, Stallone said at Cannes.
