Rambo: Last Blood

Sylvester Stallone has played the same two characters 13 times over the past four-plus decades. With his Rocky franchise, he’s found enough ways to freshen and perpetuate the concept to keep it compelling.

By comparison, his Rambo series has never been on that same level. The latest and apparently final installment, with the lazy title of Rambo: Last Blood, only reinforces the notion that this character is past his prime.

The fourth sequel to the 1982 action thriller First Blood is targeted only at the most ardent franchise devotees who will most appreciate its throwback approach and are less likely to quibble with the threadbare script and indifferent direction by Adrian Grunberg (Get the Gringo).

At least the final showdown conjures up some vintage Rambo, in which the title character dishes out his ultraviolent brand of vigilante justice on an army of cartel henchmen assisted by his impressive assortment of weaponry, from guns to knives to crossbows to explosives.

Prior to that, however, the goings-on are woefully shallow and uninspired, with a narrative that’s disconnected from the prior films. Still haunted by post-traumatic stress disorder related to his time as a soldier in Vietnam, Rambo has essentially retired to his Arizona ranch, and is about to send his niece, Gabrielle (Yvette Monreal), off to college. Who knew that beneath his hardened outer shell, he’s soft and mushy in the middle?

At any rate, Gabrielle first insists on reuniting with her long-lost father in Mexico, which Rambo insists is a bad idea. Ignoring his advice and basic common sense, she goes anyway, and winds up kidnapped into a prostitution ring. When he learns of her fate, Uncle John isn’t far behind.

The premise, of course, is contrived to swing Rambo back into action-hero vengeance mode, in which he assumes his perpetual pissed-off scowl and cleans house.

Side note: Stallone has always been a master of montages, and one such highlight finds Rambo booby-trapping a series of tunnels on his property in preparation for the climactic confrontation.

Last Blood makes a strained attempt at contemporary relevance — one amusing sequence finds our hero plowing through a flimsy barbed-wire border fence with his pickup. Yet while the subject matter might be vaguely topical, Rambo no longer is.

Rated R, 89 minutes.