'Roid Ragin' Rocky

Rating: 5/10 (15 January 2008)

Sylvester Stallone was quoted once saying that screen writing isn't too hard, that he was amazed at how many people work on a script for years and never get anywhere with it. Apparently he knows something we don't about simply telling a story. Sometimes it works for him, and he writes Rocky. Sometimes it doesn't, and he "writes" Rocky IV. I emphasize that word because the movie is little more than a couple of sweet 80's montages thrown together. There may be some skill in the editing of Rocky IV, but the writing was probably done in a weekend.
Russian 'roid junkie (Dolph Lundgren) comes to America and fights Rocky's friend Apollo Creed. Creed hasn't been training hard enough though, and the Russkie kills him in the ring. So what can Rocky do but challenge him in his fatherland and show him the shining light of the American way? This movie is awful in everything it does, from the flat characterization of  well, everyone, to the ludicrous fight scenes. In the first couple of Rockys, I could believe that those men at least received some boxing training to look good in the ring. That was abandoned for the fourth chapter, in which the actors prance around the ring like professional wrestlers, shoving and head-butting all over the place. So I'm led to the conclusion that this is not a boxing movie at all, but a wrestling picture like the kind we saw in Barton Fink.
Wrestler from Barton Fink: "I will destroy him!"
Drago in Rocky IV: "I will break you!"
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