The latest chapter in Sylvester Stallone’s nearly 40-year-old franchise, Rambo: Last Blood, is under attack by woke critics as “racist” and “problematic.”
Apparently, the mistake Stallone made was making a movie that dares to reflect real life, which is something movies are only supposed to do when the villains are white, Christian males, preferably from the Deep South or a country with a name that ends with “vakia.”
But no, Stallone decided instead to reflect a real life crisis involving Mexican drug cartels, which means Mexicans are the bad guys.
These censorious scolds are tedious and exhausting, but also revealing. They are angry over a movie that explores a very real problem, a movie that asks us to pay attention to the sex slavery that is happening along our own border, and their only argument for this censorship is “racist!”
Emphasis is mine throughout:
In “Rambo: Last Blood” — 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 (Yvette Monreal) and turned her into a smack-addicted sex slave. … [I]n which screenwriters Matthew Cirulnick and Stallone adopt the racist view of Mexicans as murderers, drug dealers and rapists, devoid of cultural context or exceptions, beyond the “independent journalist” (Paz Vega) keeping tabs on their whereabouts.
Granted, I haven’t seen the movie yet, and won’t until tonight, but according to even the most hateful reviews, this Variety review is a lie. How can the movie have a “racist view of Mexicans” when the victim, Rambo’s niece, is herself Mexican and so is the journalist who becomes Rambo’s ally?
See what I mean? These entitled reviewers are so angry a major movie is pointing to a real life problem they find inconvenient to their own personal political agendas, that they not only trash it, they lie about it.
The bad guys are blunt, icy, and crude caricatures of cartel goons; they confirm all the biases Rambo needs to take them out. In 2019’s hypersensitive cultural environment, the depiction of murderous Mexican crime bosses and their cowering sex slaves encountering a literal white savior doesn’t go down so easy.
In a sane world where people actually wanted to stop sex-trafficking, , Rambo V would be lauded for “raising awareness” about the horrors of Mexican cartels and sex slavery. But when raising that kind of awareness interferes with the left’s goal of flooding the country with illegal Democrats to turn Texas blue — can’t have that.
It’s Stallone’s unique gift to be able to tap directly into that vein of secret homicidal discontent. Thus, it’s fitting that Trump-era Rambo is essentially a human border wall keeping out Mexican rapists and murderers.
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The subtext of it all, of course, is essentially the immigration version of the right-wing meme where gun owners dare libs to come take their assault rifles. “You rapist, murdering drug gangs want to cross the border? I’ve got some tunnels you can use.” This followed by a 30-minute supercut of Rambo delivering every form of over-the-top vigilante justice short of actually gnashing the bad guys’ bones with his teeth.
This movie is the product of truly deranged minds.
But this same UPROXX loved Hustlers, where the “heroines” drug unsuspecting men whose only sin is being willing to pay a lot of money to enjoy some female company. No deranged minds at work there!
IGN:
The filmmakers have made Mexico seem like an infinite wasteland of crime and death, and most of the Latinx characters on screen are criminals or broad stereotypes. I understand that Rambo films have rarely been bastions of cultural togetherness, but in 2019, these broad stereotypes are offensive and dated and downright irresponsible.
Harrumph. Harrumph. Harrumph.
How can you attack a franchise as racist when, in its opening chapter, Rambo kicked the crap out of David Caruso, who I believe is the whitest man alive.
In First Blood, John Rambo destroyed a predominantly white sheriff’s office in a predominantly white small town, and in Rambo III, he sided with the Mujahideen(!!) against the Russians.
The whole point of the Rambo series is to reflect real life, is to rip an idea from the headlines and do what movies are supposed to do: raise awareness through wish-fulfillment.
First Blood (1982) is basically a 70’s movie about our forgotten Vietnam Vets. Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) is about America’s lingering angst for those missing in action after losing the war in Vietnam. Rambo III (1988) is all about winning the Cold War. Rambo (2008) tackles a real-world problem in Burma.
This is what Stallone does, this is what John Rambo is all about, and whether critics like it or not — they sure hated Jennifer Garner’s Peppermint, which pitted an Angel Mom against MS-13 — our open border, the horrific gangs that thrive along it, and the drugs and human misery these monsters traffic in, is a timely, vital, moral, and necessary topic for a movie to explore, even an R-rated genre movie.
These fascist critics only want movies that hit their political sweet spots, which is pathetic enough, but they never state their case beyond name calling. Is “racist” all you got?
How about making a social justice case as to why sex trafficking by Mexican cartels should be ignored by Hollywood.
That’s what I thought.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.