USA vs. Russia at the heart of the cold war

Rating: 7/10 (26 November 2008)

Rocky 4 strikes me as a combination between a traditional Rocky film and an over the top 80s action movie. It seems that the Soviet Union has finally officially entered the world of professional wrestling, entering a contestant in the form of Ivan Drago, a stolid mass of scientifically trained punching machinery, played with effective stoniness by Dolph Lundgren.
Creed and Rocky are undeniable boxing rock stars by now, as is unquestionably illustrated when we see that Creed learns about the arrival of the scary Russian one lazy afternoon when he's watching TV from his POOL. I didn't know people watched TV in their backyards during the day while lounging in their pool. Isn't the screen a little difficult to see with the sunlight?
No matter, because soon we learn that Drago can throw punches that deliver the intricately measured force of 2150 pounds per square INCH. It's interesting that this installment in the Rocky series has made the effort to actually measure and describe the force of the punches landing on our hero's head, but I calculate that the man's fists, with gloves, are roughly six square inches at the impact zone. Now, if my calculations are correct, at more than a TON per square inch, every single punch would send Rocky or any other human being doing backflips into the audience behind him.
The point of all this force, however, is that Drago is a machine, the man is barely human, he's a biological experiment that the Russians have hooked up to innumerable different pieces of equipment and trained to be literally a scientifically flawless fighting machine.
Apollo, however, is the one that loses his cool, not Rocky. At a press conference, Apollo loses his temper and berates the Russians in public, himself challenging Drago to a fight. Evidently he hasn't learned anything from the first two movies, because he lets his confidence run away with him, and again puts on an elaborate, ridiculous dance when he enters the arena.
Of course, this whole fight is designed to generate anger from Rocky towards the Russian, and to show how little humanity Drago has left in him after all those years of scientifically guided training. They have trained the human being out of him, and someone needs to beat it back in.
Notably, this is the first time real revenge has been a motive for Rocky. The fight between Apollo and Drago was supposed to be another spectacle fight, just a show to raise money and attention, but clearly Drago didn't understand that or didn't care.
At any rate, Rocky demands a chance to fight Drago, but the Russians insist that the fight has to be in Russia because Drago has received too many death threats. This leads to lots of footage of Rocky training alone in the freezing cold of a Russian winter juxtaposed with images of Drago training in a nice warm lab surrounded by scientists. It's hardly fair!!
Adrian, as before, is highly unhappy about the fight. She doesn't want Rocky to fight anymore because she's worried that one of these days he is going to be seriously hurt, and justifiably so. Rocky has taken more than his share of beatings over the years, and a Russian who can deliver the weight of small cars with his fists is not the kind of person I would want to get in the ring with either!
Part 4 is the first Rocky movie that had a noticeably and ridiculously cheesy musical montage, cutting in footage from the older movies and giving me the feeling that they just needed to pad the movie for sufficient running time. I can't think of any movie I've ever seen where a cheesy music video was put in and added anything to the story or made the movie better in any way. And there are two in this movie!
At any rate, I appreciated that the Russians assigned Rocky with two "escorts" who followed him wherever he went. I have been living in Communist China for two years, and trust me, the feeling of being watched never goes away and is never unjustified!
The fight itself, however, is definitely one of the most exciting of the series so far. Drago comes on like a machine, he is completely invincible and beats Rocky around the ring like a kid. The crowd, meanwhile, cheers against him. He's totally alone out there in the dead of winter in a foreign country, and it's not hard to feel a little scared for him.
But the important thing is that, despite what Drago says, both fighters respect the other's physical perfection. Rocky says that he sees three of Drago out there ("Hit the one in the middle!"), and Drago tells his trainers that Rocky is "like a piece of iron." Mutual respect changes the meaning of a fight like this drastically. It makes it much better.
I am curious to know how the movie was received in Russia, because the Russians behind Drago are clearly the villains of the movie, and the story presents them as representations of the Russian government. Te "escorts" that followed Rocky around are nothing more than spies (the real life ones are not impressive either), and the movie ends with an impressive but preachy speech about the importance of overcoming nationalist differences and people coming together.
But preachy or not, the movie is still inspirational even after the Soviet Union has collapsed, even though it has gone much too far, ah, 'over the top' in the exaggeration of reality department. While the original film is remembered as a boxing film that's not about boxing, part 4 is an action film that IS about boxing