Still the exact same formula

Rating: Null/10 (6 July 2003)

*spoilers*
1) Intro recapping last fight 2) New event 3) Rocky reacts to new event 4) Something bad happens 5) Rocky loses heart, can't train 6) Rocky regains heart 7) Rocky trains unconventionally while the theme plays 8) Rocky defeats villain
It's been the same thing for 3 consecutive Rocky's.
Anyway, Rocky 4 is still entertaining, but the director slipped up at the beginning: the Russian team is polite, and they get laughed at during their press release and taunted/mocked by Apollo. Drago hasn't said a single word yet, but the white-collar american crowd in the first fight boos him loudly because he's Russian, and we're expected to agree with them because by doing close-ups on his cold-looking face, the director set him up as the Bad Guy (tm). Ha! I've seen better audience manipulation in the WWF. As a result, the first half of the movie has the normal audience (ie, non-americans who view this movie without national bias, without automatically hating the Russians or cheering the Americans) supporting the Russian, and this becomes problematic since at the end of the first half he officially becomes the Bad Guy that you have to hate.
Lousy movie full of the american hollywood pseudo-patriotism that every real person hates, but it's still a guilty pleasure like all the other Rocky's because of the fight scenes.