Sylvester Stallone has made precisely two good movies: the first Rocky (1976) and the first Rambo (1982), actually titled First Blood. He has since proceeded to sequel the two flicks to death (because what else would he do?), with markedly diminishing returns, culminating perhaps inevitably in this bottom-feeding, pointlessly violent waste of celluloid (and your time). 

You know one of the most thankless roles in today’s cinema is the wife (girlfriend, daughter, niece) of the protagonist in the happy first scene of a revenge flick, because the nasty things that will soon happen to you provide such movies’ raisons d’etre, i.e. justification for the wounded warrior’s supposedly righteous shootings, knifings, beheadings, garrotings, dismemberments, explosions, bludgeonings and other punishments he will eventually wreak on the bad guys.  

I won’t go into the “plot” details, mostly because I don’t want to. Suffice it to say that for the final scene he lures a few dozen Mexican assassins to his ranch, which he has so thoroughly booby-trapped I expected to see boxes with “ACME” stenciled on them. Wile E. Coyote meets The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. 

On top of all that, the cringe-worthy script, co-written by Sly, is lazy and flaccid, the carnage entirely gratuitous, and let’s face it, the dude isn’t getting any prettier. Utterly repellent, and worse: no fun. I wish I could un-see it.

(89 min)