finally saw this last night. pasting my 3.5 star letterboxd review:
Going to assume if you are reading this that you accept a certain degree of plot holes, clumsiness, and 2-dimensional characters, so I won't address any of that. More similar in tone to First Blood than any of the other films, this really takes over an hour to get going full bore. Even so, I wish it were longer. With a running time of just under 90 min, I would have liked the third act to be more drawn out, where he's picking them off one by one, letting them feel fear, more like the first film rather than racing from kill scene to kill scene. While it's a crazy, over-the-top (heh) segment, it would have been nice to savor it some more and/or have more of it. Could have cut the entire "looking for daddy" sub plot and just had her visit Mexico for a grad trip or something and replaced those valuable minutes with more violence. All of that being said, there are a ridiculous number of exploding head shots in this film, while also includes some fantastic gore in the way of flaying and decapitations. The ending montage, culminating in JJR riding off into the sunset, felt like a "thank you" to fans. Thanks right back atcha, Sly. And farewell Rambo.
really wish they had dropped the whole daddy subplot, as i said. a lot of the first hour felt like "taken" but with exponentially dumber people. if the timeline of the film had been more 50/50 versus 2/3 - 1/3, i would have probably loved it more. still, that ending segment is pretty great, and as i said there is some great gore.