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Rating: 5/10 (2 January 2016)

Remember when Rocky ended the Cold War? No? Well he did. He strapped himself in and leaped over a shark to do it.
Rocky 4 makes the grave mistake of trying to get political and meaningful in a Rocky movie. The first Rocky was beautiful because it was simple and meaningful in the sense that it was autobiographical of Stallone's life. Now that Stallone got comfortable in his shoes as the famous boxer, he (admittedly) ran out of ideas. Now, there are some great moments and plot points in Rocky 4, but the execution is poor.
Rocky 4 sees the tragic departure of Apollo Creed at the hands of Ivan Drago, the Soviet man- mountain. The character of Drago as created by Dolph Lundgren and Stallone is frighteningly intense and stoic. Close up shots of his eyes and Lundgren's perpetually mask-like expression do the character well. Weathers rounds out his role in the franchise nicely, whilst Stallone feels like he's sleepwalking and has lost all connections to the sweetly shy boxer he played in the first two films. Adrian is shunted even further to the sidelines, confirming her once and for all to the "supportive wife" trope and giving her nothing to do.
The death of Creed is very upsetting and Drago's menace is established well early on. The screenplay shows that Stallone can still pen some sweet moments - Paulie's emotional outburst feels out of place but its still a nice scene, and there's a few bits of humour that land nicely. The character of Duke Evers could have been given much more prominence - I understand that Rocky doesn't need training at this point in his life, but Tony Burton's emotional scenes are among the film's best and the idea that he and Rocky would click together had the most potential. Duke lost his "son" Apollo in the way that Rocky lost Mickey. The contrast between Rocky and Drago is strong (even though the red filter is far from subtle) as it portrays Rocky as a back to basics whilst Drago is portrayed as a factory product.
But the flaws are just too big to ignore. Its insane how much of a 90 minute movie can be dedicated to flashbacks. I estimate that almost 10% of the film is flashbacks in the form of Rocky's tradition in showing the final scene of the preceding film and a bizarre flashback montage at around the 43 minute mark that serves little purpose. There's just nothing else going on in this film. Two short fights and a training montage in between. There's no sense of drama. Additionally, Bill Conti's iconic score is completely absent. Why? A Rocky film without the Rocky theme is utterly stupid and whilst Hearts on Fire had its moments, I was still waiting for Gonna Fly Now to start blazing.