Reliant on the Entertainment Value

Rating: 9/10 (22 November 2015)

Various people have their opinions on which movie Stallone should have stopped at. In my opinion, this should have been the final installment in the Rocky trilogy.
I have taken a star out of it because of the realism of the scenes. The thought of Soviet citizens chanting "ROCKY" in 1985 is hard to believe and Lundgren was much taller than Stallone.
If you focus too much on how real things should have been or if there is too much emphasis on politics, then you won't enjoy the movie too much. The same applies if you have a negative view of Stallone. You either like his movies, tolerate them or hate them.
Although you can't compare this to the first movie or even the following two sequels, "Rocky IV" is quintessentially a 1980s action film. It has the typical good guys/bad guys theme and obviously the viewers should chant for the "good guys". Although the powerful Ivan Drago is meant to destroy Rocky, Balboa unintentionally shows that you don't need drugs to succeed and if you have great mental strength, you can battle through anything. I'll reiterate this concept is more for the sake of entertainment than realism.
What is often not given enough credit is the performance of Burt Young as Paulie. Putting the obscure relationship with his robot aside, "Rocky IV" features Paulie at his most humorous and most brutally honest. This is best summed-up when Paulie, Duke and Rocky arrive in the USSR and Paulie says that their cabin is "below the human standard".
The Rocky movies are the type of films that make you want to cheer for the underdog and this is no different. After all the adrenalin of the fight in the USSR, this should have been the right way to end the Rocky saga. Rocky V and Rocky Balboa weren't really worth making.