User blog:DragonDude83/PE Proposal: Hugo Martinez

It’s been a while since I’ve had such revulsion for a villain in a film, but PE is not a badge of honor, and villains like him prove that. Perhaps he doesn’t rise above the standards of other Rambo villains like Major Tint, but I think he still qualifies. That said, what do you have to say about Hugo Martinez?

Who is Hugo Martinez? What Has He Done?
Hugo Martinez is the main antagonist of the 2019 film, Rambo: Last Blood, and is the leader of a sex/drug trafficking ring (along with his brother, Victor).

The movie follows John Rambo trying to settle down in a ranch while raising a friend’s granddaughter, Gabrielle, like she was his own daughter. On the way, Gabrielle goes to Mexico without telling John or her aunt so she can get in touch with her father, who turns out wants nothing to do with her or her late mother. After that, her supposed friend, Gizelle, took her to a club, where she got drugged and kidnapped to Hugo’s sex trafficking ring.

Eventually, John Rambo got the news that Gabrielle never went to the college she was supposed to go, and went to Mexico. He interrogates El Flako, the man last seen with Gabrielle, in such a brutal way (cutting open his shoulder and moving his collar bone), to the point he tells him where Hugo’s cartel is. After he was discovered, Hugo, Victor, and the cartel beat him down mercilessly. Hugo steals his license and the picture of Gabrielle he kept with her. Hugo bluntly tells Rambo that the women there are not people, but playthings that he sells. He lets Rambo live, vowing that he will make a harsh example to Gabrielle, then orders Victor to carve his mark on his cheek. Victor shows the driver’s license to Gabrielle, and carves the mark on her cheek as well and forced drugs in her, which eventually lead to her overdose death.

Rambo was rescued by a journalist named Carmen Delgado, who had been investigating the Martinez brothers who had kidnapped and murdered her sister. Rambo raids the brothel where Gabrielle is kept and rescues her, but she dies from the forced overdose on the ride home.

After burying Gabrielle, Rambo rigs his ranch tunnels with traps for a confrontation and goes back to Mexico, where he goes to Victor’s home and kills several guards and decapitates Victor. In retaliation, Hugo leads a group of his henchmen to Rambo’s ranch in Arizona, where each of them fall victim to Rambo’s traps and a bloody shootout. Saving Hugo for last, Rambo pins him to a wall by shooting arrows to his limbs, then stabs him in the chest with a large knife before slowly cutting his chest open, allowing Rambo to rip out Hugo’s heart, and forces him to watch it stop beating before he dies.

Mitigating Factors
Ha, I don’t think so. True his brother did get decapitated, but he didn’t treat this as he lost his brother, instead he treated this as "You killed my henchmen, so I’m going to your house to kill you." As far as I’m concerned, he saw Victor more as his right hand man. A proposal could be made for Victor as well. The fact that he referred to Gabrielle and his sex slaves as things shows that Hugo is a sick son of a bitch, even calling Gabrielle a bitch after her death.

Does He Reach the Heinous Standard?
Compared to Major Tint being a pedophile and using child soldiers and Colonel Alexei Zaysen being a sadistic torturer to his prisoners, we should remember that this is a retired Rambo that tried to live a happy life while raising Gabrielle as her own daughter, until Hugo’s cartel got her. It was when they forced an overdose on Gabrielle that incurred Rambo’s wrath. Hugo kidnaps and drugs women to traffic. And let’s not forget that he refers to the women not as people, but as things. So with the setting of this movie, yes Hugo qualifies.

Final Verdict
Big YES!