Film making at it's most basic  but has enjoyable moments

Rating: Null/10 (1 May 2002)

Rocky is rich and successful, however his friend Apollo Creed feels he has fallen out of the public eye. When a Russian boxer comes to the US, Creed takes the offer of an exhibition match of goodwill. During this fight Creed is killed by the might of Ivan Drago. Rocky decides to travel to Russia and fight Drago in his home country to take revenge.
This is where the wheels finally came off the Rocky band wagon. It was never a really strong series anyway, but this reduces it to nothing more than two fights and some music videos. Where I and II had soap opera stuff to back up the action, and III had the sub-plot of staying sharp at the top, this has very little. The story is literally 1  Creed dies, 2  Rocky drives round to flashbacks of the first 3 films before training in Russia and 3  Rocky versus Drago. Segment 1 is silly  we forget all the `staying sharp at the top' stuff of III and instead have Rocky buffing his cars, buying ridiculous robots for his son etc, and Creed's fight is done with little real drama but lots of `noooooooo' style acting! Segment 2 is little more than a long series of music videos as flashbacks and training scenes play under rock music. The fight in segment 3 is OK, but it is very, very far from realism and is maybe a stretch too far.
The whole US v's USSR thing is a bit unsavory  the whole thing has a lot of anti-Russian feeling to it, despite Rocky's `message' to the two countries at the end.which to me said `lets all get along (but don't forget that America always wins)'. Stallone does OK, but he doesn't have any depth that his character had developed in parts I-III. Shire, Young and Weathers have very little to do, and Lungren is literally a robotic lump of meat for Rocky to overcome. As for Nielsen  it is very clear from her performance that she only got the role because she was seeing Stallone at the time.
Overall this is easily the weakest of the series. The fight at the end is the only redeeming feature and even that smacks of cheese where other fights had been emotional, well designed to pull your heart strings (even if they were slightly exploitative).