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Rambo: Last Blood Gets Killer Teaser Trailer

John Rambo is back, and he didn't come to enjoy a nice round of golf.

The first teaser trailer for Rambo: Last Blood was released today, and it's quite clear that even though the ex-Green Beret has gotten on in years, he's every bit the stone-cold killing machine he's always been.

Before we dig in to the spot, here's what we know about the flick's plot. For the last decade or so, Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) has been laying low on an Arizona ranch, picking up odd jobs and continuing to grapple with the PTSD that has plagued him nearly his entire life. His relatively calm existence is disrupted when a family friend, Maria (Adriana Barraza, Drag Me to Hell) tells him that her granddaughter Gabrielle (Yvette Monreal, The Fosters) has disappeared during a trip to Mexico to attend a party. Rambo takes off in search of the girl, but gets more than he bargained for when he stumbles upon the operations of a sex-trafficking ring. Teaming up with a reporter (Paz Vega, The OA) whose half-sister has fallen prey to the criminal organization, he sets out to rescue the victims and take down Martinez (Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Life Itself), the vicious head of the organization. 

The trailer opens on the dusty old ranch, with Rambo sitting on the porch in a creaky rocking chair as his grizzled, weary voiceover intones, "I've lived in a world of death. I've watched people I loved die." As if to underscore this statement, we see him visiting a cemetery, and get a look at the well-stocked rack of rifles in Rambo's workshop as his narration continues, "Some fast, with a bullet. Some... not enough left to bury."

We see Rambo having a little down time with his horse and contemplating himself in the mirror, as the narration goes on. "All these years, I've kept my secrets," he says, as we get a shot of Rambo sharpening a gleaming blade, "but the time has come to face my past." 

We're then shown a Mexican village, followed by a shot of Rambo surrounded by at least a dozen guys with guns — guys who presumably have no idea that, no matter how it might look, they're outnumbered — on a rooftop. "And if it comes looking for me," Rambo's narration continues, "They will welcome death."

A series of quick shots show us forces being deployed to counter Rambo's assault as he breaks out his trusty bow and arrow (with a smash cut to an exploding vehicle just as he releases the string serving as an awesome visual callback to those exploding arrowheads which served him so well in 1985's Rambo: First Blood Part II). We see a firefight in some kind of underground compound, followed by a sequence in which a bunch of heavily-armed dudes attempt to take down Rambo at his ranch with nary an idea of exactly what they're walking into (hint: it just might involve boobytraps, explosions, and doom). 

A final sequence shows us a blood-soaked Rambo unsheathing that blade from the spot's intro, readying himself to plunge it into some unseen party, as his voiceover delivers one last, ultra-badass proclamation: "I want them to know that death is coming. And there's nothing they can do to stop it."

Well, now, let's just get this right out of the way: Stallone might be 72 years old, but he's still built like a brick wall and more than capable of convincingly portraying a very, very dangerous man. This spot lets us know in no uncertain terms that, septuagenarian or no, this is the same Rambo who basically annihilated the entire gun-wielding populations of three different countries, and the sex-trafficking scumbags unlucky enough to cross his path are all going to have really bad days.

Stallone co-wrote the script with Matthew Cirulnick, who co-created the intriguing Amazon Prime original series Absentia. In the director's chair is Adrian Grunberg, who only has one other feature under his belt (the 2012 Mel Gibson vehicle Get the Gringo), but has worked as an assistant director on a laundry list of interesting projects including the Steven Soderbergh's 2000 ensemble piece Traffic, Sam Mendes' 2005 war drama Jarhead, and the Netflix original series Sense8 and Narcos.

Appearing at Cannes last week, Stallone spoke at length about the flick's plot and how Rambo represents "the dark side of nature that most people live with" — the polar opposite of his other iconic character, Rocky Balboa, who is "more the optimist." Sly also offered a succinct tease of what will ensue when Rambo heads south of the border: "Bad things happen," he said. "There's going to be some serious vengeance in this movie. A lot of people getting hurt." (via Deadline)

We would expect no less. We'll get to see just how serious the vengeance is when Rambo: Last Blood hits the big screen on September 20.