I Watch Films: Rocky IV
Okay I watched this once in the 80s when Apollo being killed by an unstoppable Russian and Rocky coming back and beating him (SPOILERS I guess) and making an appeal for peace between the US and the USSR was not a period piece. I vaguely remembered that. I also remembered the vast amount of flashbacks to events in earlier films, and, of course, the training montage(s). But there’s some things I forgot.
There’s a comic-relief robot (Rocky has all the money and has spent it on a posh house, fancy cars and a robot). There’s James Brown. Ivan Drago is trained by machines in a hi-tech gym while Rocky trains in the snow and a barn, helping Russian farmers right their horse and cart that has fallen over, and slipping his KGB tails by outrunning their car, and sprinting up a mountain. It’s certainly an interesting take, juxtaposing Russian technical mastery* with Rocky’s scrappy, working-class, basic training.
Oh there’s some boxing too, the first fight isn’t great but the final one is pretty good.
Watch This: For some Cold-War-Rocky action, or maybe you’re planning to see Creed II
Don’t Watch This: If boxing is boring or sport as a metaphor for competition between nations seems dumb
* And one shot of an injection to reinforce the previous suggestion that there are performance enhancing drugs.
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