With Creed, Sylvester Stallone, seamlessly passed the torch. Old athletes become coaches in the real world, so Stallone could step out of the ring in favor of Michael B. Jordan and it felt entirely believable. But cop-killing, PTSD-suffering antiheroes don't exactly have apprenticeships, so it fell to Stallone himself to end the Rambo series with Rambo: Last Blood. And, if the reviews are any indication, John Rambo's last hurrah is a bloody, confusing mess.
The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw took shots at Stallone's age and the movie's tired penchant for extreme violence in a negative review.
"This massively enlarged prostate of a film can only make you wince with its badly acted geronto-ultraviolence," he wrote.
Ian Freer of Empire suggests staying home if you want to keep your memories of youthful Rambo intact.
"As a last hurrah for a once great action icon, Rambo: Last Blood is a damp squib," he wrote. "Put your headbands at half mast and remember him from his glory days."
Over at the prestige publications, Glenn Kenny noted that not even the extreme violence of Last Blood can shock the viewer out of their general malaise. He called the film rote and mechanical in a scathing review for the New York Times.
Not all of the reviews were entirely negative, however. Johnny Oleksinski writing for the New York Post said that the film contained the "most violent movie scene of the year" and that it was "awesome." Several reviews pointed toward Rambo's reliance on elaborate traps, lending the entire movie a Saw-like air. Overall, the film is currently sitting at 39% on Rotten Tomatoes with no sign of improving. We'll see if that's enough for audiences to make it a Netflix weekend when Rambo: Last Blood hits theaters on Friday.
