20 years later and this movie is really bad

Rating: 4/10 (16 December 2006)

I am one of the few people on earth that liked Rocky III the best and this based a lot on knowing the characters from he first two movies. Rocky III as a standalone movie would not be great.
Rocky 5 is horrendous and hopefully the Rocky Balboa which has not been released at the time of this review can be the "unofficial finale" to the Rocky Series.
I know we are talking Cold War times and Slyster Stallone was trying to make an anti war statement but this movie is garbage.
We have the Russian boxer who is on steroids, trained by high tech equipment, and produces three times as much punching power as any other boxer in the heavyweight division.
He kills Apollo Creed in the 2nd round of an exhibition match so Rocky agrees to fight him in Russia for free on Christmas day.
At this point, the series has already killed off all the interesting secondary characters (Mickey & Apollo). Based on what was shown with the Dolph Lundgren character, it would have been impossible for Rocky to beat him yet Rocky goes the distance and all the fans in Russia start cheering for Rocky. Rocky knocks Draco (spelling?) out in the final round and gives a sappy anti-war speech. Maybe the movie was better in the time that it was made and I was 19 when I first saw it and didn't remember it being terrible. However, 20 years later, it is just a horrible movie to be followed up by a even worse movie.
Sly should always be known as Rocky and there are some great movies in there which can inspiring but Rocky 4 is just an attempt to make money off the Rocky name.